FG LoL Monday is on – 9:30PM EST
We’re on for Fearless Gamer Monday Night tonight, folks. If you’d like to log on and play some games with the other readers from this fine blog, join the chat channel “Fearless Gamer” in your PvP.net client around 9:15 EST or so this evening.
I’ll be there, of course, playing under “The Wiggin Boy.” If you can’t join the chat room for some reason, feel free to add me and send a message so we can get you invites. Hope to see you online tonight!
Any thoughts on this issue? I don’t know why I find this interesting, but I do.
http://www.solomid.net/blog.php?v=14036&page=0#comments
Honestly, I pay very little attention to what happens with the pro circuit, mostly because it’s like watching a bunch of middle school girls argue about boys. I’ll throw in my two cents, though.
One of the big issues e-sports continues to face is the simple fact that there are too many people trying to get their hands in the honey pot. There are so many different organizations, all with their own rules and charters, all with different advisory boards/people, none of which seem to be willing to agree on a standard competitive format for these games. Is it a best of two series? Best of five? Best of three? Blah blah blah.
Then there’s the technical part of the game, which further confounds things. LoL finally got a pause function to deal with in-game issues, but computers still crash, networks go down, DDOS attacks still happen, and in just about every one of these situations, someone is going to get screwed.
Add to that the fact that most of the gaming pros are in their late teens, early twenties, have zero professional experience, several have zero social skills, and they really have no advocate on their behalf when something goes wrong. There are not gaming “agents” for these teams that can negotiate tournaments, work out problems, etc.
All of this means that when something goes wrong, the teams turn to their communities, hoping that the loud fanboysim will sway one of the many tournament and esport directors that have been involved in the process so far.
In short, it’s a clusterfuck. It doesn’t surprise me that problems like this show up with nearly every tournament.
Problems like this should surprise you though Jeff. It’s natural for the fallout to happen given the primary demographic for Professional League of Legends, but what’s ridiculous is riot’s complete inability to handle these situations well. All that needed to happen here was to stick to the original rules outlined. Not hard at all.
Somehow they still fucked it up.
I guess that’s talent?
From what I can tell, none of the decisions made that are causing such a ruckus were made publicly and, as such, everything we read about this is hearsay. Granted, I haven’t done a ton of research so if that’s wrong, point me to a thread with actual facts regarding this thing and I’ll be glad to read it.
Is it being poorly handled? Yup, sure is. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Riot has been notoriously terrible at communicating with the player base for 18 months+. I think they were pretty great when I first started playing the game but their player base exploded and they kept trying to use the same communication methods that worked when the game was small.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack your post, but there is no good way communicating with you off topic on this site.
Jeff, you should do a post sometime on “Professional E-sports” as it relates to LoL.
Personally, I think E-sports in general are laughable, but it would make for a good discussion.
That was fun. Maybe next time enough for in-house.