Honestly in this thread you shouldn’t expect me to tell the sarcasm. There is just so much hate going around that you can’t expect someone to be kidding about a hateful comment.
So, I’ve thought about this, and I honestly don’t know what to think. After asking the questions I’ve asked, I just dunno. I mean, all I can see is this either fracturing the community, or kill the community altogether. Love of the game has kept this community alive for years, but I have a feeling that once MLG steps in, and “big” money starts getting thrown around, it will become less about love of the game and more about the money. It may not happen all at once, or it may not happen at all, but I could see smaller tournaments die because of lack of interest due to the “hype” of MLG, then slowly, larger tournaments, like Final Round, Winter Brawl, etc slowly die out because they just can’t compete with the pots that MLG would be offering up. I think you’d see bigger name players not even bother with non-MLG tournaments because of the payouts, you see an influx of “pro” players into the scene, etc. While I’m all for new players, I think the kind of players this would attract would be detrimental to the scene as a whole.
Or you could see the community split. You’d have the MLG supporters and players and you’d have the “hardcore” players. And let’s face it, the bigger name players in the scene would be on the MLG side, because that’s where the money is. Who wouldn’t love to make a living off a video game? So you’d have two camps of people, both claiming that they are the real community.
Hell, I could be all wrong about it, but that’s just the way I see it going. Whether it happens or not, I guess we’ll see, but that’s my opinion on the whole matter.
this really won’t affect the community either way. EVO won’t go anywhere and neither will all the big majors. If MLG were to pick this up, it just means all the nonplacing people who think they’re good will flock to MLG in hopes of something or trying to make a career out of it.
honestly what we have now isn’t bad. Which is why i’m lost on why people are so crazy for pushing this idea. People will need to travel no matter what route this goes and people still need to improve their skill in the longrun. just cause you’re “sponsored” doesn’t mean jack shit if you still can’t get big wins at the bigger tournaments.
and i’m even more appalled that MLG is trying to take this serious when they still have money to pay to the winners from Evo2k5. Yea. Good start in trying to regain the trust MLG.
A lot of this is a repeat of what I wrote in a thread at Tekken Zaibatsu, but here goes:
When I first heard about MLG back in 2004, and I read their primary objective was to grow professional gaming–that is, standardized direct competition in video games–so that it would reach a mainstream level, it reminded me of StarCraft and how big it was in Korea (not to mention how far ahead the players are in terms of skill level). Here was MLG, trying to pull off the same thing in North America but for multiple games. Thanks to my brother, I was familiar with EVO, the major tournaments, and all of the local tournaments across the country that have been running for so long.
I made a promise to myself to get involved with MLG and try to get a spotlight for fighting games. I grew up playing Street Fighter, and with the new life that SF4 injected into the scene, I started competing in tournaments for SF4 and HDR last year. I’ve played in over 30 of them over the past eight months. I’ve won two local tournaments, placed top 3 in more of them, and competed in a few majors as well as EVO, of course. I made it out of pools at EVO but went 0-2 afterwards, losing to Rex0r, who pre-qualified for EVO through Midwest Championships, then gootecks on main stage. At Summer Jam in Philly, I finished top 24, followed by a top 32 performance at Season’s Beatings 4 (where I was close to beating Daigo in the 3v3 tournament but ultimately choked like so many others), and a top 16 finish at Winter Brawl in Philly last weekend (and a mere 5th/6th finish in HDR out of 12 players, ha). Aside from revitalizing my own competitive fire, SF4 also brought that promise I made to myself back to life.
Well, I did manage to get involved with MLG. I work in the Sales Operations department for the company, and I used to be the Community Manager a few years ago. I’ve laid low since 2005 as far as getting fighting games added to the Pro Circuit is concerned, mainly because of what happened with Tekken 5, a situation that never should have happened. It happened for two reasons:
- relative youth of the organization and lack of established credibility
- delays in prize payments (financial issues)
Things have changed a lot in the nearly five years since. For one, we rectified the prize payment issue at the start of 2006. We haven’t had a single late payment since. We are a corporation, however, and the prizes won at corporate-backed tournaments aren’t issued until 6-8 weeks after the prizes have been claimed. By “claim,” I mean prize release forms and W-9’s filled out. The way we’ve done it over the past few years is that we hand the prize checks to the players at the next event. This ensures that the players receive their prize checks–no chance of things getting lost in the mail, wrong address, etc. This means that if you finish in the top 8 at our first event in April (Orlando, Apr 16-18), you will be handed a check at our second event in June (Columbus, Jun 4-6). If a player can’t make it to the next event, then the prize check is mailed to them shortly before the next event takes place.
MLG has also grown quite a bit since 2005. We’ve brought more sponsors on board, our venue spaces have gone up from under 5,000 sq. feet in 2005 to over 50,000 sq. feet in 2010, our company staff has quadrupled, and our live stream numbers have increased 100 times over compared to 2005. We’ve learned from our mistakes, and we’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t. MLG is ready to try its hand again at fighting games. We’re going to do what we can to give more attention and exposure to Tekken 6, and we want to do the same thing for SF4. We’re asking you to give us a chance and help us out in building up community support and turnout at events.
While I don’t work directly with the league part of MLG, I would advise them when it comes to treatment of SF4, the community, and the players. If SF4 were added to MLG’s Pro Circuit, we would look to the SF4 community, players, and tournament organizers to determine rulesets and sort out other issues. I’m a tournament player myself, so I understand firsthand how things work, both from a grassroots standpoint as a competitor and from a corporate standpoint as an MLG employee. We want this to be authentic, and we want this done right. To my knowledge, no players have been forced into signing any bad contracts.
EDIT:
I agree that online play is not an accurate gauge of skill, especially when compared to offline play. I rarely play SF4 online, and I only do so when a friend asks so that he can try some things out. Online play wouldn’t be used to seed the top players, as they wouldn’t need to compete in online qualifiers. This is how MLG’s Pro Circuit tournaments are seeded (in order):
Current season Pro Circuit (event) rank points
Past season Pro Circuit (event) rank points (not applicable for Tekken 6 this year)
Online Qualifier rank points
Random seeding
We actually use a more complicated system for titles that have been on the Pro Circuit for multiple years, similar to the rolling points system that tennis uses. In tennis, points expire after one year (not after one season)–for example, if I earn 100 rank points on November 1, 2009, those 100 points will expire after October 31, 2010. Our rolling points system is based more on events rather than calendar year. Anyway, one event rank point will always have more weight than an infinite number of online points.
Things may be different for Super depending on how things turn out, but for Tekken 6 at least, the first MLG Pro Circuit event in April won’t have an accompanying Online Qualifier, so online performance won’t be used to seed that event. For players who go to that event and place well, their performance at that event (and future events) will be used to seed any following events in which they compete. For the first event, we will make best efforts to seed accordingly. We would do something similar for Super at its first event, even if there is an accompanying online qualifier.
Gran_Calc:
I can’t speak for anyone else but I have complete respect for MLG and what you guys do. I got my start as a Melee player and your tournaments were seen as really the pinnacle of competition in that game. I would be very excited if you guys picked up SF4, and would definitely go to any events held in the midwest, and maybe even travel to other circuit events. Even if some people on here don’t think it’s a good idea, you guys should add SF4 anyways and prove them wrong 
okay thanks for the sales pitch where do i sign up for mad loots
Sign my tits!
HAHAHAHAHA! PR douche. Let’s play, i’m hungry.
Complete nonsequitur, and it’s an utter failure of an example in any case. Pro StarCraft in Korea is basically a grindmill where the players live in a dorm, have no lives, and get shucked out past a certain age for not being able to spaz out pre-set strats fast enough. LET’S HAVE THAT SOUNDS GREAT!
Meaningless gibberish. You were fmailliar with EVO. Wow that’s huge. And you were then also familiar with “the major tournaments” – wonderfully vague, aren’t you just the skilled community manager – and the local tourneys across the country. ALL of them. K.
Guess there was a bit of procrastination between that previous, meaningless inspiration and, you know, actually doing something. And a SPOTLIGHT! How blessed we are to finally have such a champion, because the MLG is a benevolent corporation whose purpose is to contribute to the vitality of a genre! And not, you know, leech off scenes for advertising partnerships.
Oh, by the way, do you still want those to only work for you and not the players? Because that whole “LOL sure, go find sponsors… but you can’t do anything to advertise them anywhere anyone might see it” thing was really funny. But tell me more about your sponsor money?
Pretty much shit out of luck for cred so far, so let’s try the shotgun approach! Maybe i’ll be able to overwhelm them into thinking i’m one of them! Hey look! I can namedrop!
Autofail. Done-talking-forever-class autofail.
Mea culpa. Kinda. Maybe.
ProTip: primary responsibility of your entire organization is to pay out to winners. You earn credibility by doing this. Failure to accomplish this means that your organization was trying to pull a fast one, couldn’t even do that right, and got busted in the most obvious way possible.
Also, pilot turns out to not be an experienced aviator, crashes and kills all passengers, but lives. HEY! Let’s give him a second chance!
Promising! One of your organizations most important duties, and it only took a catastrophic fuckup to fix! Perfectly understandable growing pains since it happened a mere 3 years after the MLG’s inception. Guess those things just slip through the cracks sometimes!
^ what crawled up your ass and died?
He has a need to act angry at all times, I dunno.
Generally if you were trying to take the money and run, you wouldn’t mail people cheques later.
http://www.mlgpro.com/content/news/302153/MLG-Announces-First-2010-Pro-Circuit-Details
Are they waiting for SSFIV? next year? Gamebattles is fine enough for me.
So when MLG starts running tournies on the same time as Evo or other smaller yet important tournaments to the community, what happens to the community that supported the games it loves even when they were dead in the mainstream’s eyes? Lets say MLG offers some pretty alluring prize money. Whats to stop some of the better/top players of this scene go to MLG and go under contract and can’t compete at Evo. MLG is going to want to be recognized as the competitive standard, and as much as I would love to believe people wouldn’t sell out, if the money is right people will compete in one over the other.
Somehow, I don’t think that contracts will stop Top players from entering in EVO. But more players will wear stuff like Dorito Tshirts. Also, doesn’t that mean no more Money Matches? Daigo won a good amount to my belief last year.
Well for Halo they do have contracts that do not let players play in certain tournaments. For most players and fighting games though, you are probably right. Still, they are an organization big enough to offer enough prize money to potentially divide the community.
Just understand that you will probably need to prove yourself, because the FG community demands the highest competitive standards, and it’s very very easy to screw things up when money and sponsors are involved.
I heard they had laggy TVs at the Tekken 6 world championship. That’s right- Even Namco-Bandai can’t run a tournament at their own game as well as the community itself.
All big name tournaments could run on Standard Definition TV’s for all we care. We prefer it 100% competitive over being fancy to the viewers.
If you will treat the FG community seriously enough you will gain their respect and support in return.
And if people are true about not being able to compete in non-MLG events, get rid of this that BS approach ASAP.
as if we needed more evidence that eventhubs sucks
I’d like to think, if it came down to it, the fighting game community is deeper than a handful of players.
MLG is a tournament organization, and one that grew from a relatively grassroots base rather than just random investors starting up a new trendy technology business venture like a couple of the PC fuck-ups, while the console oriented part of Bamco has honestly shown they don’t have the faintest fucking clue what they’re doing. Scenario Campaign and a broken training mode? Really?
http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/view/txGMDKSmUAE.html
PR-speak, I know.
Who knows how the community feels like a whole. If it does happen, I think that MLG will probably need fighting boards like SRK, Dustloop, TekkenZaibatsu, VFDC. Nothing really beats non tourney matches though. NO contracts just plain good fun with money( if you have the amount and skill).
I like this post
Shhhh. It’s called critical thought. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Go back to talking about One Piece. Oh look! Pokemon.com! Are Heart Gold and Soul Silver out yet?
YES! Because when you’re a competent business run on-the-level and reasonably thought out, you forget how to fucking pay people after 3 years of existing. Which is understandable, because how often do tourneys with Massive Levels of Prize Money have to pay out? Oh right. Every time.
A good question. How about it, Captain Spins-a-Lot? Let’s have some info on league exclusivity.
Answer carefully. Call me crazy, but years of an entire field subservient to even the most low-level PR *** has left me gloriously bloodthirsty. Failure to answer will be taken into account. Good luck!