ACL and WCS in depth.

The Australian Cyber League has recently announced a partnership with Blizzard in making some notable changes to WCS Season 3. Prior to these changes WCS America ran online Oceania/SEA qualifiers in order to give our region a direct (reflecting our population and player base), yet homogenous, opportunity to qualify for the biggest and most prestigious Starcraft II league (or tournament, whatever you want to call it) in the world. Many people have expressed their discontent with these changes and some with good reason. Before going into my dialectical, I want to preface by stating I hope I make no arrant assumptions regarding the organizational process undertaken by ACL and Blizzard ANZ. Those individuals involved are professionals with years of experience and I do not profess the hubris to presume to know all the facts that went into this decision.

With that out of the way, LET US BEGIN!

The changes.

The changes are simple. One online qualifier, one LAN qualifier, bringing us to a total of 2 players invited to play in WCS America (clearly, the numbers have not changed). ACL Online Round 3 in June will transform into the WCS online qualifier and ACL Sydney in July will become the respective LAN qualifier. 1st place in each earns a spot (In the case of the winner being the same in both, Baldie stipulated that 2nd place from ACL Sydney will get the spot, it makes sense chronologically).

If we cut it down what does this actually mean for our region? People in SEA/Oceania are unique (to my knowledge) of having two WCS qualifiers in different formats (i.e. 1 LAN, 1 online). This is not a difficult concept but the implications of this change are multifaceted

The problems…and answers?

Problem 1: The overseas hopes (Iaguz, Petraeus, MightyKiwi, and others).
The first complication of replacing an online qualifier for a LAN event are the difficulties that arise for players currently overseas long term (to my memory PiG will be in Europe during ACL Sydney as well). As logic would have it, the best players get the best opportunities. Players like Iaguz, Pet and PiG are extremely talented and as a result are privileged in living overseas in team houses, training with other pros giving them a geographical opportunity to compete in NA and EU events. Obviously these players are not morons and realized that by leaving their home region they would be relinquishing a place at local and national LANs (such as ACL).

To argue “they knew what they were doing in going overseas” is facile. Nobody knew until the 19th of May 2014 that Blizzard ANZ would cooperate with ACL to subtract an online qualifier spot for the biggest Starcraft II league and replace it with a LAN. Considering the status of WCS in the Starcraft II scene I can only assume that this event is the one most featured in the minds of professional players. However, it appears to me this LAN idea indirectly punishes players who went overseas for the very purpose of improving in order to better compete in events JUST LIKE WCS (which has now unintentionally subverted their efforts). Permit me to elaborate why it is hampering players overseas. Losing the extra spot to a LAN means overseas competitors lose a chance at making WCS America. As I understand the WCS system you cannot compete in two regional qualifiers (i.e. if you compete in WCS EU qualifiers, you cannot compete in WCS KR). If Iaguz did hypothetically play in the online qualifier he would automatically restrict himself from playing in a WCS America qualifier (which I believe he is permitted to do because he currently resides in the USA). This effectively gives him and those like him 1 shot at qualifying whereas those lucky enough to still be in Australia will receive 2 attempts. You could say “toughen up and pick a region, SEA is easier but the risk is higher” but I don’t believe this line of reasoning is conducive to improving SEA E-sports because it unwittingly degrades the legitimacy of our region. It would inevitably mean our best players would become absorbed by NA and hence leave us with 2 charity spots which would amount to absolutely nothing.

A possible solution could be to give special permission to those players stuck in this bind to play in 1 online qualifier for WCS Oceania/SEA and 1 for WCS America. This gives them the same number of attempts / spots as everybody else and eliminates the travel problem. Whether or not the logistics are possible, I don’t know, I’m just spit balling. If this was possible it would (in my eyes) completely solve the issue at hand. Feel free to tear this apart, I’m not entirely up to date with the specific rules of WCS, I may have made some grievous errors.

Problem 2: The tyranny of distance.

Moving closer to home.

Australia is big, I mean REALLY big. People here often don’t appreciate our sheer size when you compare it to countries in Europe. We have almost the same landmass as North America! What this implies is long, and often expensive, travel times. Few of the Starcraft II talent is privileged with sponsors that pay for interstate travel to attend events like ACL Sydney and this absolutely poses a problem.

Side note: If any of you dare cry that the players good enough to qualify at ACL Sydney are all sponsored please think again. A Player such as Fenner (who for the sake of respect I don’t wish to discount) is not supported by any organizations at present but is undoubtedly a player who can take games off anybody in our region. Having a lot of skill does not necessarily mean you will be financially ensured to go anywhere.

Flying from Perth to Sydney is expensive. Not everybody has the money to fly interstate, less players means less diversity and less diversity will mean different results. It would be foolish of me to suggest we only host a tournament where EVERYBODY in sc2sea can attend but to argue that this WCS spot will be given to the regions “best” (or second best…your call) is tenuous at best. This problem is very similar to the one I addressed earlier however I cannot think of a logical solution which wouldn’t be confounding. I’ll leave this one as unsolved.

Problem 3: OSC Comparison, representation of regional talent.

I feel like I am just bashing on Eddie 24/7 but I really don’t mean to. He made this comment in the thread on this topic.

“If you look at upcoming ACL Brisbane, I think there will only be 6 out of the top 32 players attending, Sydney might have a couple more, but still doesn’t represent regional talent.” (http://www.sc2sea.com/showpost.php?p=167515&postcount=15)

OSC DOES NOT give us an accurate representation of regional talent if you look purely at the numbers. In the top 32 alone we have 10 players who aren’t even from SEA (the further down the list the more boat people we have). Allow me to do the math regarding how ACL Sydney will be represented in terms of “regional talent”. Ok screw the math, if people want the math I can show them later, this post is getting long enough as it is. I estimate 10 of the top 32 (that’s top 32 WITH people like HuK and Catz) would attend… if we replace the foreign spots with people ACTUALLY FROM SEA the number only rises. On that note I think ACL Sydney will be a fairly good representation of SEA talent. Maybe not perfect, but what LAN event that doesn’t pay for competitor flights is?

Problem 4: A different perspective?

Maybe we are just all looking at this from the wrong angle. Everybody is looking at this short term.

“This is a bad idea because for this 1 specific season of WCS one of our best players MIGHT not make it through…”

If I was to argue for the absolute integrity of the tournament I suppose this could be a fair argument but in the grand scheme of things this is just ONE WCS spot in ONE WCS event. Things will change.

You know what I focus on? A GOD DAMN BLIZZARD SPONSORED LAN GUYS! HAVEN’T HAD ONE OF THESE SINCE 2012!!!!!!!!! That excites me. The Australian LAN scene excites me. I would prefer Australia (and elsewhere in SEA) develop their LAN scenes even at the expense of representation on the global scale (well…maybe not entirely). In this specific situation…I think this is a step forward for SEA.

A thought…

Does anybody remember WCS Oceania / Australia in 2012? Perhaps my memory is failing me but the concept seems awfully similar, just reduced. All the qualifiers for the event were done via LAN events around the country, the best players were invited to compete in Sydney for spots in the WCS global finals (I think that was it). MaFia and Moonglade where the two players who made it right? So that isn’t so different. The key difference of course is the fact they had LANs all over the joint which I suppose negates the problem of distance…unless you live in Alice Springs. Just something I wanted to touch on…I like to think of this as a mini return to that tournament 😀

Thanks for reading, also thanks to SLCN.Law for helping me think out what I was going to write about. Give him a follow on twitter @sc2Law

Management in SEA Esports.

NOTE: As per my usual lazy self, I haven’t  proofread, I merely wrote this out in one go cold. Forgive any repetitive use of language or syntactical errors.

In the following piece I hope to shine a light upon the darker, more enigmatic, side of E-sports. Many people in the pleb sc2 community (i.e. those that are neither professional player, caster nor manager) hold sponsored teams and their affiliates as people beyond inspection. Too many times have I seen legitimate criticism of a SEA team’s management twisted and directed towards the very person raising the issue. I believe this is the case because of the esteem the community holds E-sports organisations. The blind acceptance of titles in SEA is frightening, people labelled as “Manager of X E-Sports team” overnight become viewed with an apparent air of competency, sophistication and intelligence purely because “hey, nobody incompetent or duplicitous could get themselves sponsored by a name brand like Gigabyte or Tt right?”

So wrong. So very wrong.

I have managed two Australian “E-sports” Starcraft II divisions and neither experience was a positive one (to be fair, the first experience was an absolute joke, the latter, not so bad). I am the first to admit my ignorance when I was duped into joining a team which offered a lot (flights, jerseys, discounts on sponsor products, partial accommodation fees etc.) but ultimately was all talk. In my naivety I wasted months of my time, and months of my friends time, who I had brought over to the team. In the end we all left with a bitter taste in our mouths. Let me tell you know, don’t believe the pomp and bombast of Australian E-sports teams, 95% of them are bogus and carry around no weight except for the HTML on their website. Openly lying about sponsors (e.g. putting major companies on their website as sponsors when in fact THEY WERE NOT), lying about offers, lying about pretty much everything is not an impossibility. I have no idea why people do this, I for one would instantly step back if I found myself out of my depth, but apparently there are less honest (and more insidious) people than I in SEA E-sports.

Because brevity has never been my strong suit, I will offer a list of points which I think will better the SEA community. Too many people perceive “teams” an infallible. REMEMBER, they are run by people just like you and me, we are all mammals and nothing is different because you have a fancy prefix before your name. If I have anything to learn from my experience it is to mistrust ANYBODY with a team prefix and then treat them with the utmost suspicion.

Things to know as a manager.

• You are the middle man between your players and the organisation. It is your responsibility to make sure the team delivers on its promises and the players on theirs.
• A contract is a written document with signatures, dates, and mutual benefits which both parties must agree upon. Just because somebody tells you “you are on contract now” doesn’t mean you are actually on contract (SAME APPLIES TO PLAYERS).
• Be active within your organisation, know who the managers of the other teams are. Keep in contact with them, see how they feel the organisation treats them (some orgs have a bias towards certain game genres).
• If the team you are on is frequently dropping / adding a lot of teams (or has an inordinate number of teams signed) be wary, this is often a sign of “quantity” not “quality” and may reflect management.
• If you aren’t getting answers to your questions or requests from higher management, do not be intimidated by buzz words or snide responses. If people in the organisation take business personally then they probably aren’t going to be very good at what they do. Don’t be afraid to go barking up trees, sometimes jimmies need to be rustled. Indolence often rules king amongst people who believe themselves “privileged” or “special”.
• Sort out of a concrete budget or deal which details how your team members will be financed / funded. Set it in stone, jot it down in a notepad file if you have to.
• Be honest with your players, don’t lie to them or extort them.
• Do not be impressed by people naming themselves “CEO”. This is meaningless and often points towards an inferiority complex.
• Find out where the team is getting its funding from, is it funded by the owner? Do sponsors actually fund it (this is rare in SEA, contrary to popular belief)? If so, how much do they give and on what basis? What return do they expect?
• Form a personal bond with your players, don’t be a superficial suit.
• Business is business. Don’t take things personally. Apply this standard to your superiors and your players as well.

Things to know as a player on a team.

• Remember, you are more important to the team than the team is to you. Never forget this.
• Ensure your manager keeps on top of things, sometimes they get swamped or lazy, don’t be afraid to ask questions or pester them. Managers should have the dates of upcoming tournaments in their heads, they should know about upcoming clan wars, shipping of gear, how it’s getting to you etc. etc.
• Please don’t be entitled. Sometimes a team won’t give you anything until you have “proven” yourself. That being said, figure out objective criterion for what “proven” means or else you may find yourself perpetually chasing an impossible standard.

Things to know as a plebeian.

• Teams with sponsors are not much different from clans. They are not perfect, they are not run by super intelligent pr0gam3rz. They are often run by people just like you with full time jobs and some money on the side to spare.
• If some kind of intra-team drama becomes public, don’t immediately jump to the side of the team staff or the whistle blower (or w/e you call them). Suspend judgement, wait for the facts, then make up your mind.

 

In summary, the problems in most teams stem from people with accentuated superiority/inferiority complexes who just want a name in their given community without having to really do anything except “have money on the side”. Indolence and incompetence are also common. I have only come across a couple of cases where team managers / organisations maliciously try to exploit their players, this is rare but it DOES happen.

Teams often sell you on their ideas and not their achievements / substance , too often do these organisations have grandiose goals they want to achieve by a certain time frame and too often do these goals conveniently not work out due to some “unforseen circumstance” or “unfortunate event”. Be wary if this becomes repetitive.

Please note my opinions and thoughts here are not indicative of the entire SEA scene. There will always be bad eggs but for whatever reason particularly rotten ones continue to exist without being called out on incompetence and inadequacy. My shout outs to managers and players on teams which are responsible and hold themselves accountable for their actions. Keep doing what you are doing.
Criticism is welcome, if you have anything you think I missed out and should mention, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or message me on twitter @DoMoAU.

If you ever find yourself approached to manage an E-sports team and hav any questions, feel free to contact me or another manager in SEA, often it is good to get an experienced perspective. I wish I had done this before I joined my first team.

SEA Rising Stars tournament analysis.

NOTE: HAVE NOT PROOFREAD

The recent rising stars tournament run by Eddie this past week was a huge success in my opinion. It was incredibly well run from a spectator’s perspective (I watched the entire tournament except for the semi-finals onwards). Both streams ran smoothly, the games were entertaining, and SEA managed to accrue a decent stream viewership thanks to being listed on the front page of TeamLiquid.

Post tournament, Eddie asked for some feedback. I will now gladly oblige this request.

In the following lines I will attempt to be as objective and fair as possible. Feel free to call me out on anything specious or fallacious. Don’t hesitate to pick up on any meaningless buzz words or tools of rhetoric as well.

You may ask why I would bother wasting this much time into such a comprehensive examination of the rising stars tournament, but hey, I’m bored with nothing to do and this sort of analysis is fun for me (this isn’t much work for me anyways really).

The key problem I had with this tournament was the decision to seed higher ranked players (by OSC points) further into the tournament by 2 rounds (effectively giving them 2 free wins). The logic behind this decision was that is gave weaker players (again, decided by OSC points as Paperclip pointed out) a chance to play closer games as opposed to be stomped by somebody like Blysk. Note I have no issue with the players invited nor the criteria upon which an invitation was granted, my only qualm is with the seeding style.

Here are some brief pros and cons of the seeding style (if you feel I have missed any, let me know and I can edit the article and append my arguments for/against said point).

The Pros

• – Lesser known players given a better chance to win.
• – Smoother stream transitions, don’t need to wait for sets.
• – Overall, more exposure for lesser known players, by extension, more exposure for SEA.

The Cons

• – Player fatigue increases the effective skill gap between players.
• – Higher seeded players get another advantage in being able to see the tournament builds of their opponents prior to facing them.
• – Degrades the invitation process and integrity of players, the bracket format is the antithesis of “fair”.
• – Seeding style relied on inductive assumptions. Implies more than a correlation in relationship between OSC points and “skill”.

I will now extrapolate upon the niceties of these pros and cons through individual investigation and also the meshing together of these concepts into one.

So, examining the pros first.

Giving a lesser known player a designed chance to win in any kind of tournament seems counter intuitive to me (if you take into account the competitive nature and purpose of tournaments). The goal of a tournament in any form is to determine the single best player from a set of many (best player within the scope of the tournament at least). I don’t think you could describe this tournament as both “truly competitive” and “fair”. By intentionally modelling the tournament to give a deliberately better chance of lower level players to win contradicts the concept of competitive fairness (where EVERYBODY is placed on the same pedestal, there are no handicaps). That being said, it is the rising stars tournament. After the long discussion on the sc2sea forums about the seeding idea it seems the primary purpose of this event was to promote SEA talent and SEA itself. So I suppose this is consistent if you hold to that premise.

On the stream side of things, yes this tournament did wonderfully. There was very little downtime between sets because the earlier seeding had developed the bracket further. With two streams going this meant there was scarcely a time when a set wasn’t being played on at least one of them. Stream downtime is arguably the most frustrating thing you can experience as a viewer, especially when the tournament you are watching isn’t the WCS finals but rather a lower levelled tournament held in a very small region (SEA) by players few have ever heard of. By minimizing stream downtime the tournament probably (I don’t have stats, merely an assumption, forgive me please) kept more viewers hooked on spectating. This by definition means more exposure for SEA talent. This was a good thing. But is it worth the loss of tournament integrity? (Which I will explain now).

Cons time,

By implementing this seeding idea one opens the tournament up to a variety of problems both esoterically and practically. Firstly, by giving the “better” players a further seed into the event you give them the distinct advantage of being able to watch the streams and perhaps (if they are lucky) view the tournament strategies of their upcoming opponents. Furthermore, with the example of Fray’Wally, who had to play 6 sets compared to Fray’Crimson’s 3 sets yet both were eliminated at the same time (Losers Round 5) and both received the same placing and the same prize. The fatigue Wally must have been playing with surely had an effect on his game (I’m sure this was the same for many other players). The speed at which the games were played (as indicative of the stream) also gave the lower seeded players less chance to rest since their next opponent was already ready and raring to go. This seems like a problem to me.

The seeding implemented also degrades the integrity of the invitation process. When you are offered the privilege of being invited to a tournament based off a combination of dedication, skill and participation, I don’t see why these criterion need to be assessed for a second time when creating the bracket. This is not an ACL pro bracket where players with more points are seeded higher (note they also do not get double walkovers because of this seeding, they still play the same as everybody else). People are invited on OSC points etc. It seems overly elaborate to me to judge the players AGAIN by the very means upon which they were invited in the first place.

Extending this point one may rebut and say “but how are we to make this tournament fair and give the lesser known players (amongst the lesser known if the tournaments premise is to be accepted) a better chance of winning / have more entertaining games?”. Well as I mentioned earlier, I don’t see any reason why a tournament should be skewed to favour less skilled players by counter intuitively giving their competition (better players) further seeding into the bracket, again this just seems like added wheel spinning. I also do not accept the ludicrous argument put forth by some that “it can allow for more exciting games”. I’ve never known a serious tournament to base its bracketing structure off of spectator preference, this defeats the very point and definition of what a tournament is. What I find most insidious about this tournament is that it takes for granted the competitive mindset of the competitors. As far as I am concerned, if I was one of the players relegated to the very first round of the tournament I would feel cheated and disrespected. I apparently have the qualifications to enter this rising stars tournament, but I’m not quite respected enough in my play to deserve a shot against players deemed “better than me” (by OSC points at that). Everybody deserves a fair shot at everybody else, this tournament is the antithesis of fair and I argue it has no claim at all to any form of competitive equality.

On the quantification of skill, again as Paperclip pointed out, is based off of OSC points. Now I don’t think anybody here can make a logical case for OSC points being causally related to skill, they are merely a correlation. Using OSC points as a measure of skill I therefore argue is fallacious. Yet in the reasoning behind this logic we are told that people with higher OSC points deserve that higher spot because of both 1. skill and 2. reward for participation. I have already pointed out why using this criterion AGAIN after invitation seems frivolous (therefore refuting 2.) and I have also explained why OSC points are not a necessary indication of skill (therefore refuting 1.) . Besides, there seems to be an inherent contradiction in seeding the “better” players further via their OSC points and deemed “skill” but then placing those with lower OSC points and by apparent extension “skill” lower. One cannot build half the tournament around one measurement and the other half around a completely different measurement if you want it to be taken seriously.

I left out other points but I didn’t feel they were worth mentioning. Again, criticize as much as you want, I would love for my mind to be changed since it is quite clear which camp I am in.

All in all this tournament did not seem to be seriously promoting the integrity of its players but was instead meant to promote the SEA region as a whole. I don’t have a problem with this concept, but with that point in mind I cannot take the tournament seriously.

People may say this tournament “worked” but I can’t imagine a tournament not working… it seems like an unanswerable question which can neither be refuted nor proved. My gripe is with the bracket format and that is all. I can’t imagine a spectator deciding to not watch a tournament because of the seeding, but I can imagine a tournament being compromised (results wise) by poor structure.

Final remark.
“We have to try new things, we have to take risks”

Anybody who employs this phrase as an argument needs to learn basic logic. Just because something is new doesn’t mean it is superior. What you need to do is have a debate about your new idea and hash out all of the different perspectives. Perhaps this is too much to ask of people in a community run by those with full time jobs, but I don’t want to see this nonsense spouted as a reason for doing anything differently. Blizzard may as well just seed Jaedong into the finals of WCS because “well we aren’t getting as much viewers as we could, so we are going to try something new, we have to take risks after all right?”. You need to analyse an idea first.

Done. tl;dr I have a lot of spare time on my hands.

P.S. HAVE NOT PROOFREAD AT ALL