BW For Life! or Helping BW Thrive

On May 01 2012 13:17 CakeOrI)eath wrote:

I agree with CaucasianAsian. We might have lost most of the good foreigner players and even tournaments to sc2 (TSL etc.) but we still have some foreign only tourneys and events. Game, along with others, have done remarkable work keeping those alive.

The true thing that many of us fear losing is the professional sc1 Korean scene and broadcasts. To me this thread is about keeping the spirit of that alive and available to foreigners to watch. This might just mean finding better ways to tune into Korean amateur tournaments that are already going on (and possibly donating to them). It might mean funding our own tourney for the Koreans to play in. Either would mean crossing a lot of cultural barriers.

I honestly don't know why its so hard for foreigners to access fish/afreeka. It seems the Koreans have no interest in making themselves available to us either through ignorance, apathy, or national pride (sc is Korean sport, gtfo everyone else). At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what reason it is, that's where the money comes in. If we make it clear we are willing to pay to watch high level bw, I'm confident that will change most of their attitudes.

To start off that money is going to have to come mostly, if not entirely, from viewer donations. I think we all agree we don't want a pay wall since we want to grow viewership, not kill it. While that model might actually be sustainable, I am personally hoping that we could actually grow viewership to the point that advertisers would be tempted to take over, or at least help. Either way, that is a long way off and it'ss assuming the KR progamers fully switch over to sc2 (I personally am still hoping they switch back to sc1 after this one year, and none of this will matter but I know its wishful thinking)

The thing I will agree with Game about is mixing the foreigners in. As much as I would LOVE to see our best players at least take a game off of the top KR amateurs, it just isn't going to happen. I certainly wouldn't bar them from entering but only invite them if they have a legit chance of winning a BO3-BO5. A 50-50 mix would mean so many walkovers it would just be a waste of time for everyone.

Short Term:

IMO the quickest and best results we can get is to do as BLinD-RawR suggested and raise funds for a Korean Clan League tourney with all star foreigner clan.

* According to kjwcj:
---1 to 2 day tourney = ~200$
---ISL length tourney = ~2000$
---koreans will be reluctant to stream anything but afreeca though they may be ok with dual afreeca/twitch stream
---biggest problem should be communication/time logistics
---our community is totally capable of accomplishing our goal if we can overcome the logistics
* + Show Spoiler [kjwcj's very informative post] +

On April 28 2012 17:38 kjwcj wrote:
Before trying to do anything with the Koreans, you have to accept that you're never going to get them off Afreeca entirely. The main reason for this is that the return per viewer on Afreeca, by way of the balloon donation system, is so much greater than that of Twitch or its competitors.

For example, HiyA broadcasts to an average audience of 500-600 people 5-6 nights a week. By the standards of an SC2 or LoL stream on Twitch, this is small potatoes. However, HiyA receives enough donations from this relatively small viewer base to earn a decent living. This is the case for any number of other ex-pro broadcasters who also rarely attract more than 600 viewers but are still able to make streaming Starcraft their full time occupation.

Obviously, there are possible compromises. In the past, Nada has dual broadcasted to Afreeca and Twitch by running Xsplit and the Afreeca Broadcasting software in tandem. This is a decent alternative as it would allow the players to earn something from their foreign audience through Twitch ad revenue without cutting them off from their normal Korean audience. The effort to get something like that set up could potentially be a barrier for entry, as well as actually finding someone to show these guys how to set everything up.

Something that is probably a little bit more straightforward is simply having them come to us. A few hundred thousand won (ie. a few hundred USD) is a normal prize pool for a 1-2 day event featuring all the top ex and semi pro players. For a longer ISL scale event two million won (a bit less than two thousand USD) has been a rough average for the tournaments I've seen in the past six months. Obviously these aren't small amounts of money for just one person to be stumping up but they're not that different to the prize pools that we see in foreign events, so with a mix of sponsorship and donations it might be possible.

The logistics involved in organising a tournament with mainly or all Korean players has a lot of difficulties and not just those related to the language barrier. Simply having the connections to get in contact with the players you want to invite has its potential difficulties, as well as organising a way for the games to be played at a time that is reasonable for both the players and the audience. Replay casts are very uncommon in the Korean amateur tournaments I've seen and keeping the results of games private until the broadcast would be especially difficult given the fact that almost every player streams their FPV during tournament games.

Simply put, it is easily within the power of the existing BW community to put together something worthy of the absolute best that the Korean amateur scene has to offer. The difficulty is in actually making the connection and having them know (and care) that we're here.