Wednesday
Jul062011
« The Salty Runback: Regular People »
Darry
This week, Kotaku published an article that used some out-of-context quotes by David Treacy, a.k.a. “Zaccubus”, as a launch pad for some childish editorial commentary about the health and growth, or lack thereof, of competitive gaming. The author then proceeded to push her glasses further up her nose, awash in the glow of smug self-satisfaction, and got back to work on her slashfic featuring a sexually confused Sephiroth fending off the advances of an amorous Legolas afflicted by Sauron with an ancient Boner Curse. Having people within the mainstream media be dismissive of professional gaming isn’t something new, but that’s not what’s going on here. We aren’t talking about someone barricaded at the top of a print magazine’s ivory tower, we’re talking about a fellow gamer (I guess?) borrowing time out of her busy schedule of breeding Pokemon to lob grenades at Morlocks.
Thank god for Jen Schiller. She may be a bull in a china shop when it comes to the good she’s done for pro gaming, but I was in a dry stretch of some writer’s block before Kwanzaa Sagat dropped this little nugget down my chimney, wrapped with a bow.
Let’s take a moment to address the misconceptions this sort of commentary spreads by placing Zaccubus’s words into the correct context. Here is the quote around which most of the article is based.
"Every TV show I've seen so far has been way too cheesy and not indicative of what pro gaming is about. Trying to squeeze an event into a 60 minute broadcast doesn't really work for gaming... Only recently, thanks to MLG, can we see what gaming events should look like: Great shoutcasting, well presented, and without the need to cheese it up for regular people to understand."
This statement by Treacy is bookended by Schiller remarking, “Don't get me wrong, I love watching people who are better than me at video games play them for money, especially when I don't know those people. Oh wait. No I don't.”
The article makes it fairly apparent that Zaccubus’s passing reference to “regular people” has Schiller in a snarkfit. Here’s the point that she completely misses, though. When she openly speaks about her complete lack of interest in being a spectator, she is personifying exactly the sort of person Zaccubus is referencing: a person that has only casual or loose associations with the game being played and usually has zero measurable interest in the process.
I once had a discussion with someone who had asked me why, when I commentate streams, I don’t adopt a style similar to some other personalities who favor being more thorough with their exposition of the mechanics, strategies, and fundamentals on display. I shared with him my philosophy: I don’t feel the need to explain why Alex Valle keeps throwing out crouching medium because most of the people watching are already aware of what’s happening on screen. An overwhelming majority of the people who watch streams are players themselves.
This is the sort of thing that Zaccubus is talking about, tailoring the content to a small slice of the population who, in the end, don’t really care too much about the product. It makes no sense to so arduously court an apathetic minority at the expense of an invested majority. Schiller seems to have a negative reaction to Treacy’s opinion. Here, he’s talking about how it’s pointless to put on a quality product for people who could give an expletive deleted, to which Schiller snarkly rebutts that she could give an expletive deleted.I know that some people might hear me saying that we should focus less on the uninitiated and sing more for the choir and think that sounds a little elitist or insensitive, but competitive gaming, as a spectator event, is a far different beast than professional sports. IPlayWinner would be like NBC broadcasting NBA games if everyone in the arena seats, and everyone watching at home, was a professional basketball player as well. Or, at the very least, a sports writer or stats monkey.
The product we put out is, for the time being, for the players by the players. It’s the same for every single game that gets played at a tournament level. When Dr. Pepper signs on to advertise at MLG, they aren’t doing that to draw in that elusive 40 to 55 year old divorced white female demographic on the live stream. They are marketing directly to the players, through the players. Most of these games are followed solely by the people who play them.
Obviously, there is one hulking exception: StarCraft. If sponsors are only signing up for the direct market channel to a lucrative demographic, the players, how do you explain South Korea as an entire nation being obsessed with StarCraft like a 12-year-old boy that just discovered there’s pornography all over the internet?
That’s part of what makes this article especially flagrant. The Koreans aren’t being subjected to a product that’s watered down for their polite consumption. They are being shown what amounts to stream footage. This is a product that was discovered and championed by its audience, rather than being mass-produced in favor of the hope to attract an audience later. The players, shoutcasters, and sponsor groups are doing this the same way they would for five or five hundred people. Production values are just much higher.
Here in the west, we instead have mainstream media that is, at best, apathetic to competitive gaming, often openly mocking the idea. What hope do we have of ever drawing in new viewers if we can’t even have the support of video game “journalism”, much less mass print or television media? Attempting to tailor pro gaming to be more accessible is not going to do anything for increasing viewership and participation. A lot of PR work from dedicated individuals is what’s required.
Schiller snidely remarks that she finds it unappealing to watch people doing something at a higher skill level than what she herself can accomplish. Five minutes on television will show you how much of a completely out-of-touch mindset that is. With the right presentation, there is absolutely nothing Americans love more than to watch people doing something at a high skill level. When I say “something”, I mean absolutely anything. Have you ever watched other people play poker? Personally, I’d rather watch closed circuit footage of the backs of people’s heads as they stand at urinals and play target practice with the disinfectant cakes - and yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of people that love nothing more than to turn on ESPN and watch eight guys wearing sunglasses indoors stare at and knock on a felt table. There’s golf on T.V. You can watch it. I’m just sayin’.
We are at a flashpoint where we are experiencing a lot of growth, and we have the potential for quite a bit more. That growth, however, requires an acknowledgment that our current growth stems from an influx of new players who are all potential consumers within the culture. Our potential growth lies in leveraging that momentum, along with the growing expertise of shoutcasters and streamers, to create a product that is interesting enough on its own merits to grab the attentions of others and create a secondary population of enthusiasts similar to the millions of people around the world that follow StarCraft without playing the game.
To do that, we have a lot of work ahead of us. There’s a quite a few things we need - including a whole lot less of what we got from Kotaku.
Reader Comments (37)
I logged in just to say that this article is incredible.
"Schiller snidely remarks that she finds it unappealing to watch people doing something at a higher skill level than what she herself can accomplish. Five minutes on television will show you how much of a completely out-of-touch mindset that is."
So true it hurts.
Good read. Kotaku is no stranger to garbage editorials, when they're not peddling ads as articles.
Great read. Thanks for posting.
The article on Kotaku frustrates the hell out of me on so many levels I dont even know where to begin really. At the end of the day though I think it just saddens me most to see as site like Kotaku with all of its viewers not even have one shred of integrity as to what is posted. I know it's all about hits and pageviews and impressions, but this kind of stuff just makes the entire industry look like a pile of shit imo.
she wrote a response http://kotaku.com/5818687/pro-gaming-fans-rush-to-pro-gamings-defense
Don't give them the traffic. Kotaku doesn't care about video games unless they can tie them to a national/global tragedy.
Just remember that their parent posted an article about how to wipe your ass. It should have been called "Read Kotaku"
From the source article:
"Pro-gaming has always changed due to the nature of hardware, better graphics cards, and new games. But pro gaming has also been a lot like our economy: It grew rapidly over the last decade, then almost imploded on itself."
It happened once, and it can happen again. Games have the ability to turn-off vast portions of the playerbase with a single patch or game. I'll state some examples:
a.) MVC3 is for babies.
b.) Certain characters are too dominant in SSF4.
c.) MK9 is full of bugs.
With a single game update, a section of the "market" could "crash". That tenuous element illustrates that competitive gaming, fighting games in general, skate on thin ice all of the time.
"Tough one to answer as there are so many issues to consider. [But I guess the main thing is balance -- That everyone is equal both in terms of luck and skill. Also, the game has to be fun and able to draw you back in for more.]"
I agree with this. I can't state how much I agree with this, so I added brackets for emphasis.
"Every TV show I've seen so far has been way too cheesy and not indicative of what pro gaming is about."
I agree with this. Watching Justin Wong drive a car poorly? Not quality entertainment.
"Trying to squeeze an event into a 60 minute broadcast doesn't really work for gaming as it doesn't really work for tennis."
I agree with this.
"Only recently, thanks to MLG, can we see what gaming events should look like: Great shoutcasting, well presented, and without the need to cheese it up for regular people to understand."
I agree with this. To an extent.
"It's not easy to go pro. It takes time and if you don't pick the right games it could well be all for nothing as the games are always changing. [For example, you could spend over two years mastering a certain game only to have it blown out of the water as no one is sponsoring it anymore.]"
I agree with this. Brackets added for emphasis.
"Oh, and don't rage so much from losses. You only learn from your mistakes."
I agree with this. Profound advice. Watching some sponsored player throw a fit and shout at his opponent after losing is something expected from children.
And from the Kotaku article:
"Don't get me wrong, I love watching people who are better than me at video games play them for money, especially when I don't know those people.
Oh wait. No I don't."
I might actually agree with this. Time spent watching other people play is time spent not practicing, and my stream-monstering has taken a fall as of late.
Being a participant is better than being a spectator. And with fighting games ANYONE can be a participant, as a poor loser once said.
Same way giving Godhand a 3.0 made me never read IGN anymore, I will never give Kotaku a read again after this article. Don't think I will miss it much.
As I am reading these articles and comments, all I can think about is this... HOW is it more people in the world want to see Starcraft then watch a game like Guilty Gear, Marvel 3, or SF4 played by high level people? I had no idea it was that big in S. Korea. If its possible they could get to that level, I'm sure we can here in the West.
Darry is def right about the growth of the fighting games becoming like that of Starcraft. And to add to that: even though fighting is not as big as some other competitive scenes may be here in the US or elsewhere, fighting games have to be way more accessible on a viewing level to non-players than FPS and strategy. I think its easy to interpret on the simple level whats going on, even though the pros are playing at a way higher level. Just like how in football "they get the ball to the other side" in our games "the player is getting hit a lot and Ko'ed". I play FPSs on the side and there's no way I can sit and watch a whole Halo tournament or something. Maybe a highlight vid but not a tournament. Everyone who has had their mom or gf watch them on fighting tournament footage knows your family can follow whats happening at least a little. So I think we have more potential than all other communities for a casual audience once we grow stronger.
To support professional gaming, you need sponsors to add pot bonus, fly players around, etc.
Sponsors will only get involved if there are a lot of viewers. The more viewers there are, the more cash the sponsors will shell out.
Right now Fighting Game streams are already a GOOD PRODUCT. The presentation and commentary are great, the games are fun to play and watch. NO NEED TO CHANGE THE PRODUCT OR COMMENTARY STYLE.
So FG streams already offer a good product, we only need to do some MARKETING to get even more viewers.
Something simple like Capcom adding a paper inside each box of their retail games. That paper should have links to IPW, SRK, CEO, evo2k, daigo parry etc
The playerbase is there (2 million players of Marvel and Street Fighter), just need to get more casual players aware of there being a competitive scene and quality stream showing hype matches.
If the stream monsters go from 15k to 150k people watching at the same time, the sponsors will put even more pot bonus. Professional gaming just means more money for the players.
Kotaku posting something inflammatory and ill researched? No waaaay.
The entire Gawker empire pay their writers by the page view, so their writers basically become professional trolls, looking to stir up the most shit possible, because that's what pays their rent. Ignore that shithole of a site.
@Raye
Good point about Fighting Games being more accessible on a viewing level than FPS and RTS.
I think the reason for Starcraft having so many viewers:
-bigger playerbase. 9 millions Starcraft 1 copies sold, 3 million SC2 sold in 1 month. Marvel sold 2 millions in 3 months.
-A high % of SC players are aware of there being a competitive scene. Probably because there have been a lot of tourneys with big cash prizes for 12 years or more, so word of mouth and media have more time to work their magic.
I think only a small % of people who bought Marvel and Street Fighter know that there's an evo tourney or that there are cool streams offered by IPW and spooky.
Most viewed youtube involving Street Fighter is the Daigo Parry with 500k viewers after 5 years.
I did a quick search and saw 1 youtube about SC2 with 1.1 million views, and that youtube was only uploaded 1 year ago.
That's why I think Capcom should add a paper in all their retail game boxes advertising Evo, IPW, SRK, CEO, Shadowloo Showdown, Daigo parry and other tourneys + great videos.
The only thing the pro gaming scene needs for Capcom to give a rats ass beyond Evo and to treat every tournament as a chance to make money. Look at Madcatz, they have deals and show up to every event.
What if Capcom did half the stuff Blizzard did StarCraft or WoW?
Put real money into the scene and create BS to get people to pay attention. Pay $10 to watch the Capcom supported stream and get a NCR2011 t-shirt/outfit for Ken. Not a title, but junk that other people could see online and get curious about.
You also have to get streams into the games. Put them on a radio delay and help bring the streams to the audience size they deserve.
I bet most people that play Street Fighter would be shocked to find out that there is a FGC. Hell, I didn't know about any of this before G4's embedding of last year's evo stream. Now I watch every tournament I can find.
Seriously anyone who agrees with this article is a douche. Seriously, put it to the jury of what a person would rather do given basic information about the game and watch it beign played at a hi level or watch the fucking Kardashins make a decision if they want to buy a gun or not. (an actual episode).
My chick is finally into watching streams because she sees all the people there and gets caught up in the action. Granted sometimes I"ll get the question "What's option Select?" or "Yomi!?" but that's like anything. Just because you play a game doesn't mean you can't watch others play at a higher school. Sports have been doing it for decades and how people don't see how they are same thing it's outstanding me. Both involve taking A LOT of time of honing a craft. Arguments can be made about the physical activity but you have other things liek Golf and like the article mention poker. Video games will continue to have the stigma of "It's for kids" so that's why people are dismissive of it.
She's apologize but why she is so bat shit insane when she is working for a site that is proof concept if you deliver something catered to an audience it can be successful. What kind of people does she think visit her site? Just random people who just decided to google Kotaku? Think about it, "A magazine about video games? NO ONE WILL BUY THAT!?" or how about "A website dedicated to reviewing and providing video game news, That will NEVER WORK!" Why wouldn't TV work?
Few thoughts, Darry:
"It makes no sense to so arduously court an apathetic minority at the expense of an invested majority."
It's the other way around isn't it? Your 'apathetic minority' would be non-hardcore street fighter players. That's a lot of people to ignore. 3rd Strike was a game for the die-hards, and nobody else played it so Capcom stopped making street fighter. FOR A DECADE. 3rd strike is great, sure. But I'd like to see a Street Fighter 5 before I'm ninety, thanks.
"Attempting to tailor pro gaming to be more accessible is not going to do anything for increasing viewership and participation."
Says who? Has anyone tried? The only thing I can think of is Cross Counter, and that seems to be doing pretty well.
"With the right presentation, there is absolutely nothing Americans love more than to watch people doing something at a high skill level."
True, and I would argue that the fighting game streams we're getting now aren't bad but are still a ways off from "the right presentation". Commentary (in general) is a mixed bag- streamcasters are more interested in giving shoutouts to shoutouts than analyzing games. So am I going to get mad at a non-hardcore gaming journalist for saying "I can't get into this"? No, that's her opinion, she's entitled to it.
Because you're right- the primary audience here are the players- these are people who want to learn the game and get better, people who take stuff they see on the stream and get right back in the lab to learn new stuff or how to counter it.
Which is why I'm totally confused when you say your philosophy on commentating is:
"clearly my audience is the players, why would THEY want to hear about strategy or mechanics?"
@SleepyG I think it's about perspective. If you argue in terms of outright numbers then yes by all means we are in the minority but at some point someone has to say "Fuck it then we do it just for us." Apple has done shit like this for decades! At some point rather than trying to capture 4.5 million views on a Saturday; make a format that will appeal to your small loyal demographic. You brought up Cross Counter and that's exactly what it should be like. It doesn't get TONS of views but 30k for a regular series on there is good for us.
Honestly Esports has a real strong case to really trial blaze by just sticking to an exclusive online streaming format. Easier to access, less overhead, automatic world wide audience, games are implementing extra online components outside of the game. (3rd Strike Online with the Youtube upload is a great start) We are also at this point want to be able to watch stuff from our computers and/or phones. So if there is a weekend I miss out on a tourney, come monday I'm watching the replay on twitch. What irks me isn't the fact she has this misguided opinion but how Miopic it is. I don't enjoy watching Starcraft, League of Lengends, MK9 or Tekken on the stream but I see it as important to show those games because it also makes the case that SF and Marvel are worth streaming to, which is what I do like. So sometimes if I see a SC stream go up, I may just pop in the stream, JUST so the ad can run and bounce. If the game is good enough for steady esport coverage, then stream it.
wow just now saw this late, i suppose what really makes me sick about it, is its someone within the gaming world posting something like that. Someone with readers. Someone who i would think would be all far gamers taking a game to a next level. [ which is basically what all competitive gaming is]
I suppose i should not be shocked in general gaming gets a bad rap, i still get odd looks from the parents of my students when ever i talk about fighting games and my passion for them, still i expect more from people who have grown up with gaming. Its very sad to see this.
I created an Account as I noticed the discussion has gotten somewhat off topic, but in a good way.
Someone commented on how come fight games aren't gaining as quickly the popularity of games such as Starcraft in terms of the esport community. My opinion is that games like Starcraft became of a few factors.
1) Starcraft not only sold more copies, but was the first game to really offer competitve gaming in a broader format (IE Online gaming). Its also a game that was constantly patched and updated to insure everything was balanced properly with no god tier status like Yun or Vanilla Saget.
2) After Broodwars, Starcraft did not gain any expansions or major purchasing updates for the next 10 years. Right now the Fighting Game community has issues where Capcom, Namco etc keep pumping out fighting games every few years. If you want a game to become popular and to resonate with people, you need to have a standardize game. I'm hoping that game will be SF4 AE with some updated patching, but thats up to Capcom to decide. Yes, MVC2 and SF 3rd Strike were also released over 10 years ago. Problem with those games were that it was only available at the Arcade for most of its shelf life, so it never got the exploded growth as a console or PC port would have.
3) Most BIG Esport right now is about PC gaming, and the fighting game companies have only recently started trying to tap into this market. Counterstrike, Quake, Halo, WC3, SC,SC2, League of Legends. Hell League of Legends is technically a free game that was released the same time as vanilla SF4 and this past month League of Legends international tournament gained over 900k unique stream viewers world wide and also 200k concurrent streamers for the grand finals. Fighting Game companies NEED to tap into this market to allow this competitive community to grow faster. Thankfully we got AE for PC recently, but give us MVC3 and other games and we can definitely see faster growth.
Anyways, this is my current opinion, and although I don't know as much about the fighting game community, I know enough about PC Esports to give this feedback.
As people have said, this is what happens when you let anybody (like say this writer) post any old shit (like say this article) on your blog. You get a ton of hits, you make a ton of money, your site's unreadable. You're a success but you're useless. I'm honestly more frustrated by how poorly written and badly supported the author's argument is than the argument itself. It's got no place in any kind of discourse about games. The shit belongs on a Gamefaqs thread.
What really irks me is the larger picture when it comes to Kotaku. Their overall editorial culture is lazy, snarky and condescending. They do things that, when I was in the game journo...well..."game"...I would have been publicly ridiculed and rightly corrected for. Every factual flavored story has a giant slab of opinionated slant that sticks out like a turd in a swimming pool. Link back articles occasionally dance dangerously close to the P word when the Kotaku author's description conveniently rips out all the juicy bits. As with this incident, quotes are twisted and cleverly edited for a juicier read.
This, unfortunately, is the true new games journalism (Tim Rogers...one good thing about Kotaku). Hard working authors, but no standard based editorial direction. There is no guiding hand watching for some of the super irresponsible choices Kotaku authors are making. It's considered the better philosophy to do things in a bad, but flavorful way by claiming the blog defense than having an editor actually keep everything to a base standard.
Since Kotaku is now considered the news site to follow for this medium, it's also become the new standard. My stomach cringes when I see the newer faces in the press game and imagine them taking all their cues from "blog journalism".
I finished reading the Kotaku article a little while ago and like Haunts(and others) it really angered me. I also took some time to read the followup article and the comments people had left. One of the points people commenting kept bringing up was "E-Sports aren't actual sports it's just a hobby". Yet these same people can't comprehend that all sports no matter what it is, is a hobby. Though somehow Baseball, Football,etc. are "real sports" by their definition. How is a guy getting paid $1 million+ to throw a ball around any more professional than a Star Craft or Street Fighter player. Did everyone just forget that Pro and Professional are just titles indicating that the individual does whatever it is as a profession, as in a job.
I know I've kinda gotten off topic a bit but this whole thing is just pissing me off. I really don't think as a community that we need to dumb down anything to pull in a larger audience of viewers. Did Baseball, Football, Soccer,etc. dumb down their games to appeal to a larger audience? NO, so why should we. I agree with a lot of the people that pointed out (in other posts) that fighting games are probably the easiest games to spectate because the concept is fairly simple, get the opponent's life to 0, but it's the way the two player accomplish this that makes it so interesting an exciting to spectate. Just as almost anyone knows the goal of Football(for example) is to get the ball to the opponents goal, yet again the interesting part is the manner this is accomplished. In Football you have "plays" in a fighting game you have "setups". Although these examples are not the full extent of what is used in each respective game (yes, football is a game) I think my point comes across.
To be honest, I really don't want people that can't see competitive gaming as sport around the communities. I feel like it would just be a drag, so let them stick with their "real sports" of overpaid men/women playing with balls.
Holy shit I just had an epiphany, if we put a ball in somewhere would more people recognize competitive gaming as a sport? Also, great article Darry.
I know everyone is heralding this article as amazing, and while I agree with the general sentiment, and that the original article is quite poorly written and backed up- is it really right to start off your article with ad hominem?
You note how uncalled for her snarky comments are, but at the same time lower yourself to (if not below) her level by your entire opening section. I understand that you don't agree with what she said, and I'm with you on that, but you devalue your entire article by throwing in these cheap jabs... just saying.
I'm going to have to assume that the opening paragraph is just you talking out your ass and it kind of makes you out to be a spergy faggot.
As much as I might agree with what you're saying about this other person being a cunt, randomly accusing the other person of writing gay slashfic out of nowhere just makes you sound like a douche.
Objectivism is important.
"Did Baseball, Football, Soccer,etc. dumb down their games to appeal to a larger audience?"
Actually, they often have. The rules and presentation of these games have changed dozens upon dozens of times in the decades they've been played.
For the players by the players? Well if you are interested in the opinion of someone who watches many, many streams, and does not play fighting games: I do not need you to tell me why Valle keeps throwing out crouching medium. I need you to tell me where you are in the bracket, if this is winners or losers finals, what happened to my favorite players in AE and MvC3 while you switched over to MK for a while, etc.
I can assure you that the great majority of men, women and children out there wearing Yankees hats could not tell you about the "infield fly rule" or what it means when the umpire calls "balk" on a pitcher. But they probably know who Derek Jeter is dating.
I appreciate the streams and am thankful for all the hard work that goes into bringing them to us. My suggestion, if your objective is to be more "mainstream", is to realize that people are interested in the personalities involved in this community, as with any other sport. They may be watching simply to see how their favorite players rate, and to root for them. More often than not, commentators are focused on the match at hand, and have no idea what is happening outside of that. It is, after all, a tournament, and not being able to follow and know who is doing well, who got knocked out, etc. is frustrating.
Progress is being made, but the current streams (especially majors) are clearly not being done with the spectator in mind. It is more like, "We are streaming some of what we are doing, and you can watch if you want to."
Then again, regular people don't read game news sites. Does that mean they're irrelevant? Ultimately, it's one person dismissing an entire community because she doesn't like it.
Screw the spectators. Seriously.
Exactly. There is an underlying feeling of "Fuck you. You're getting this for free. If you don't like it, don't watch." That is fine, and the community will decide which route to take, but no one is going to bring in big sponsors without spectators. The community can't grow, and people will not have the opportunity to be financially successful in this venue with that attitude. Your choice.
Great article dude, it was really REALLY insightful, and was dropping truth left and right. I find annoying and close minded when people say I could never watch someone else play game I could be playing myself; when people will watch Big Brother which is essentially "everyday life with eccentric assholes", and they do that every damn day.
Problem is people let the stigma of it being nerdy, lame, or something only "introverted self inflicted- shut in virgins could love" keep them from looking at it like any other program. If it is not that mentality that is keeping people from understanding why anyone could be interested in this, it's really just the fact that they don't understand fighting and or don't care for video games at all, and I personally don't feel like we should be worried about those people; some people just aren't going to get it, and that's cool, whatev, it's not for them.
I also don;t feel like we should be trying to appeal to the mainstream media.The problem with the mainstream media in America is that they don't care about it until everyone else cares about it, or better put, they don't care about until it's making money for their network and it's on the teleprompter. So I think we should be staying as far away as we can from those ancient artifacts of media culture that only seek to control, milk, and whether intentionally or unintentionally maim to death what we love so dearly.
Also, it is my sincerest hope that I NEVER IN EVER turn on a stream, and hear Spooky, Ultradavid, James Chen, or Yipes trying to commentate like Bill Walton. The moment we can't speak how we want to speak on stream, it's all over in my mind. Keep it gutta PLEAZZZZ Lmao :D
Awesome article. I totally agree that if gaming events are shown with less cheese and geared toward people who already play/enjoy the game, other people will take notice. I honestly hope competitive gaming can reach some level of "Professionalism"
Also makes me happy I stopped checking out Kotaku several months ago.
jen schiller gave an uninformed opinion, not too big of a deal imo. the only thing that sucks is that she's writing for kotaku, which is supposed to be "journalism" or something. something like this would just be ignored if it appeared on someone's random blog.
what angers me about her article isn't what she wrote but the comments that come after there is just so much hate for this community but praise for others i just don't get it
Amazing post and honestly she purposefully misconstrued everything in the interview so I have no clue why she's trying to play the victim now in her new post. "oh i wanted to give eSports a chance but now i'm not too sure". Like seriously ho?? You never gave it a chance in the first place with the obvious negative tone you had in your first article. The fact is she insulted ignorantly eSports with absolutely no backing except out of context words from an interview and got insulted back for her stupidity. Don't see a problem here.
And by the way, there is no ad hominem in this article at all. Insults do not equal ad hominem.
Good article. There seems to be so much more stigma in the USA than many other countries when it comes to things like gaming. You know there's a problem when a "journalist" is shitting on part of the community that is giving her the damn job to begin with. I like that within the same day there was this article as well as 2 posts related to EVO news. This glorified blogger bitch is just plain ignorant. Go back to Angry Birds or some cookie cutter MMO.
Thanks for not linking to their actual site, also. The less traffic their site gets the better.
For what it's worth, Kotaku did post a follow-up article: http://kotaku.com/5818687/pro-gaming-fans-rush-to-pro-gamings-defense. The original writer's "apology" is pretty defensive, and can basically be summed up with "...and I apologize for treating it too casually.". So, ya know, fuck her.
The Editorial Director writes a better response, and they also post a number of thoughtful arguments the community wrote during the shit storm.
For those who want to bash Kotaku on their "journalism", though--that's fine--but remember that this article was an editorial, meaning it was going to be heavily opinionated. Kotaku, being a blog, shouldn't be confused with a news site. I'm not defending them, just saying that getting mad at a pig for being a pig is kinda silly.
agree with monstergogo on the editorial part. As for being offended by the "regular people" line, I don't get why that's such a problem...you really have to stretch to be offended by that, lol. Obviously he's just talking about casuals who aren't that interested- and it should be more than obvious that the media is always trying to up their ratings by catering to these people and "cheesing" shit up as he so accurately put it. Sure there are a number of people who buy into that crap (or probably more often than that just don't care since they are barely interested in the first place and don't know what they're missing)...but more often people see right through it and dislike the fact that the media thinks they need to dumb things down to reach them.
How anyone can be surprised that the competitive community is not interested in sacrificing the integrity of our events just to get big (jamming it into a bite sized 60 minute slot, adding media friendly but know-nothing anouncers *cough*sessler*cough* etc) is beyond me. How they can go even further and somehow take offense to it...lol wow...
Excellent read...I only hope this article doesn't give way to a flurry of semi-related kotaku bashing in the comme-- agh, too late