In Response to Grubby’s Open Letter | GKick Network

October 15th, 2012 by Steve Perry

(A friend of our’s, Liam Harper, wrote up this great response to an open letter written by Grubby in regards to the state of the StarCraft II eSports scene. I wanted to share it here with everyone because I think it’s a great response to a very interesting letter. Enjoy)

Earlier today I was browsing my Twitter stream when professional Starcraft 2 player Grubby (@followGrubby) tweeted a very interesting letter.

“Open letter to the community about viewership tournament fatigue in sc2 eSports

This is an attempt to see if there is a possibility for a concerted effort to help improve upon an aspect of eSports, in this case StarCraft II eSports. There are so many theories that come to mind, but each has its merits and disadvantages. Recently and regularly I read descriptions of problems in our world of SC 2 eSports. That is happening because of our community’s PASSION, which is great. One problem I’ve read about (whether the majority sees it as one or not, I find that hard to accurately judge) is “viewer tournament fatigue”. Just to explain, the concept here would be that the scene is suffering (yes, suffering, not blossoming) under the stress of too many tournaments; of oversaturation, and thus in extension suffering of a reduced significance of any one tournament. Is this a problem, or not? And if it is, and should be done about it, if anything? If you care about the eSports scene, or care to add your voice, I’d love to read your opinion (point 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6: other).Public discussions have been had many a time over this topic and other topics similar to it, but because of the complexity of the problem, I’d like to absorb your input and maybe come up with a comprehensive plan, or just keep it in mind so that I may see what I can do to improve the scene by, at any point in the future, like nudging it into the correct direction. I could try to accomplish solutions behind the scenes, or thru airing opinions on vblogs, I don’t know yet. For now, see this as a survey or even a school sociology finals exam question (it’s starting to look like one). Heh, hey, maybe I’ll grade your answer!For this item, public discussion is allowed, even encouraged – hell, you’re a free (wo)man – but for the purposes of this I’d like to request an answer to my email address contact@followgrubby.com so I can keep the discussion pure and without input or fear of judgment from 3rd parties. So if you want me to reply – though a reply is not guaranteed; I can’t predict the response size from the community – I will only do so by email. Looking forward to your reply!

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Your name and nickname:

Q: Let’s for a moment say that tournament fatigue of the viewer is a realistic problem. What will improve SC2 eSports the most according to you, and help fix this problem?

(1) more quality and quantity tournament coverage is needed on TeamLiquid/ESFI World/other sites so that the tournament and player stories get developed more. I can still choose to watch tournament A, B, or C or all three; when I do, I can easily find previews, power ranks and results as well as interviews and pictures.

(2) We need to have less tournaments around. Delayed gratification will make the next tournament that much better. With too many tournaments around, I don’t know what to follow anymore.

(3) tournaments need to become more well rounded; the time that *just* providing a proving grounds for top players for 1-4 days was enough, is over. The responsibility lies not with independent coverage, but in the production value, post-production value and pre-hype and side shows that tournaments themselves deliver. I will watch a lot more tournaments and streams if only every tournament had the production, self-generated hype or ‘feel’ of (for instance WCS EU).

(4) The same points as in point 3, but adding the following:
Every party has a responsibility to improve the viewership experience for the audience. This means a fan needs to tell his friends about SC2/tourneys/eSports; a tournament organization needs to raise her own production value; a player needs to go above and beyond “just playing” by becoming actually involved; would-be writers, people from the community with passion need to start covering tourneys; etc; basically anyone who can do anything needs to start doing it.
The theme of point 4 is: ”We dont have time to let the hype and growth of (SC2) eSports die off or decline before *maybe* it gets super big in the year 2030 after our own active followership.”

(5) There is no problem of oversaturation. The market of supply & demand will sort itself out eventually. Tournaments that don’t provide enough quality or have enough improvements will concludingly have low viewership, therefore die off and make room for the new. The same with players who don’t perform; they, too, will be replaced by the new. The circle of life will naturally work itself out, as will the circle of eSports life. No amount of theorizing is going to change anything about the direction that eSports is going to be taking, whatever that may be.

6) other. The solution is: <your solution>

———–

Greets,
Grubby”

Personally I don’t see Starcraft 2 as having too many tournaments. If people want to watch tournaments 24 hours a day and 7 days a week then they can, but they only want to watch the big tournaments they can do that too. The two biggest problems are as follows.

A) The SC2 scene seems to be too chaotic. Whilst I don’t believe that there are too many competitions I do think that perhaps the scheduling could be improved. The best comparison I can come up with is that the SC2 scene is like the tennis world. You have your “majors” (WCS and MLG to name two) and then you have tournaments all the time too. In tennis you also have that and people don’t complain about fatigue (well apart from the players), so what’s the difference? I personally think the SC2 eSport scene would benefit from a so called “governing body”, one that a company would apply to before being allowed to run a tournament. The governing body could then look at available dates and assign one. The fact that some of the “smaller” tournaments could clash wouldn’t be a problem as it might give some lesser known players some exposure (as what happens in tennis). The dates for the majors would be kept clean just for them. Yes it would give them a higher seat at the table BUT they are the ones who put the most effort into the production and the overall “product” so in my opinion they deserve it.

B) This brings me onto my second thought. Right now I think the scene is too fractured. There are tournaments here, there and everywhere but there isn’t one particular place to catch them all and to be updated on the smaller competitions. So why not set up a dedicated SC2 channel? If there isn’t enough content for that then an eSports channel covering other games such as League of Legends and DOTA2 as well? On this channel could be live events from the “majors”, highlights from the other competitions, plus news, interviews, analysis etc.

Granted this would be a massive undertaking to get going and I know the majority of the tournaments are on Twitch but think about everything that has been said in the above two points. With a central governing body that brings the Starcraft scene into some sort of order and a dedicated station backing it up, surely this would improve the scene without affecting the players? “Hmm according to the schedule, ASUS ROG is on this weekend at x time. I’ll tune into eSports Central and watch it” “Oh what’s that? There’s an interview with Stefano going out at 9pm? I’ll be home for that” How could this not benefit not just Starcraft but eSports itself?

Personally I don’t think that the Starcraft scene or eSport scene is as over saturated as some make out, but that doesn’t mean improvements can’t be considered, right?