Counter-Strike is without doubt, one of the, but probably THE most famous game worldwide.
- Millions of Gamers
- Professional E-Sports Organizations around the global with Top Counter-Strike Teams
- High-profiles companies, investing in CS-teams, to promote their goods but also investing/partnering-up with top-events to lead the development of E-Sports
I guess, there is no doubt that Counter-Strike, was (still is) one of the "go-to" games on the e-sports market. Without Counter-Strike, E-Sports wouldn't have developed so well.
On the other hand, we got South-Korea.
"The first professional "E-Sports" Market in the world."
A place, where nationally high-profiled companies claim to state: "We are doing this for the youth and the e-sports market".
A place, where star-players receive hundred-thousands of dollars.
A place, where E-Sports organizations characterize themselves as a "tool for the system" (E-Sports Organizations < E-Sports Market)
I guess, if there would be a survey for neutral people, more than 99% of them would directly connect Counter-Strike to Korea.
De facto, Counter-Strike and Korea could be equal to the colors "black" and "white". There is actually no(!) relation between those two words. Why?
As a German it was really hard to realize that Counter-Strike in Korea wasn't popular at all. Nowadays, Counter-Strike is only known to "Insiders". People, who used to work for the Korean E-Sports Market since 7~8 years. How could that happen? Seriously, World E-Sports Games have been launched in Korea twice. The origin of the WCG is Korea. So why did Counter-Strike failed to succeed in Korea?
I have no clue. I'm living in Korea for a bit more than 16 months and I think there are a lot of reasons why CS wasn't able to establish itself in Korea.
Reason #1 - CS is not fun to watch
Honestly, Counter-Strike is popular and it's actually fun to play but it is not ready for the "mainstream" due to the fact, that it's not attractive for the viewer/spectator.
Don't get me wrong, I love Counter-Strike (1.6, source is fun too. sometimes...), I manage a great team but if I watch Counter-Strike on TV, it's not really fun. Players walking around the map, securing(camping) strategic points ... In Counter-Strike you can't overview the frags, foremost you can't predict the key-scenes of a game. Counter-Strike Gamers, who are watching HLTV will be able to predict those key-scenes by switching from "Map Overview" to "First-Person" but imagine those kind of "actions" on TV. I guess that would be a disaster for the viewer, and the TV-Host.
Anyhow, I think, due to the fact that CS is simply not attractive for the viewer, Korean TV-Shows tend to stick to Star-Craft or other RTS-Games. In RTS-Games it is always kinda simple to predict those key-scenes of a match.
Reason #2 - Korea = RTS
If you play Counter-Strike for at least one year, most of the frags in "Top-Matches" won't surprise you that much. OK, the players who are playing, are Top-tiers of Counter-Strike but people who don't play Counter-Strike are seriously not really interested in such facts. They care about the entertainment.
RTS, on the other hand is different. As a viewer you see several units moving from point to point. That’s what they call "micro-management". Most importantly, it's visible for everyone watching the game.
Example) If slyers_boxer kills a lurker with one marine (yes, that’s possible) people go crazy. But if "SpawN" is killing "mal" in the CPL Winter Finals, people in Korea just say: "Ok? So What? Was this a key-scene?"
Reason #3 - The Koreans + PC-Bangs (Internet-Cafes)
After talking about the unattractiveness of Counter-Strike on TV, I'd like to focus on my topic again. In Korea, broadband Internet is common. Down/Upload Speeds beyond 100/100 mbit is usual. But even with such possibilities, Koreans tend to use Internet-Cafe' to play. Actually, I'd say that Internet-Cafes are part of the youth-culture in Korea. Before/After classes(school), clubs, bars, dinner... Koreans meet up in Internet-Cafes to play games.
For a small fee of +-700\/hour (Won;60 cents/hour), people are able to play the latest games on the latest hardware available BUT they don't play any internationally well-known games (beside War-Craft and Starcraft). Why? I guess, it could be accorded to the laziness of most Koreans.
"Why should we download a game, if there is something similar?" Koreans are "plug-and-play"people. As soon as they arrive at their place, they just want to start the game without making any complex settings. Mostly, only the few people are willing to do minor changes such as changing the resolution. Another problem is "Steam". Internet-Cafes in Korea need to pay a bunch of money for providing all their customers with "steam-powered"-games. So most of Internet-Cafe' Owners do have a similar mindset , like their customers. "Why should we pay for it, if there are tons of similar games which cost nothing"
In fact, there are tons of national FPS-Games in Korea. Two of them(Sudden-Attack, Special Force) are also ranked on the first and second spot of the "Official popularity game-ranking" in Korea. Therefore, it would be wrong to say: Koreans don't like FPS-Games.
So what could be the reason that Counter-Strike didn't succeed in Korea?
Reason #4 - KeSPA (Korean E-Sports Association)
Almost all "E-sports" Countries do have E-Sports associations. In Korea, "KeSPA" is the official association.
So shouldn't it be the responsibility of the association, to take care of the gamers, no matter which game they play?
I think an association should plan improvements in the national e-sports infrastructure. I mean, even if you can add and subtract numbers you can't study mathematics. You need to develop yourself steadily to understand all the upcoming content. I believe it's the same with markets. If you "claim" to be the "most prestigious global E-sports market", there should be facts. So let's take a look on the "facts"/"references" of the Korean E-Sports Association.
- Founded in 1999 blablabla ... as a Star-Craft Association
- In 2000 blabla
- In 2001 blabla
Anyways, there is nothing which would have an impact on the national E-Sports market. The only and one purpose is/was Star-Craft and its members. The Korean E-Sports Association arranged a co-operation with the Korean government for professional gamers. The goal was/is to establish a platform where top-gamers can continue their "e-athlete"-life while they're serving their country. In fact, this only counts for Star-Craft players. There are no plans to add gamers of other games to this project.
Another point is dedicated to the people working for this "so-called" association. As a member of such an association, it should be necessary to act in the interest of e-sports furthermore the persons, who are making the decisions, should be objective. Instead of following those basic principles, the Korean association is a pact of egoistic, profit-fanatic people who are only interested in their own interests and foremost, who stick to the non-sense Korean mentalities. Therefore, even if you have an opinion, you're not allowed to state your opinion due to the fact, that those people are older than you.
I just want to amplify, that Korea should be a democratic
Example) One year ago, loki, former member of project_kr decided to join Lunatic-hai. WEG, who had been the owner of project_kr, tried to activate lawyers since, they felt that loki violated against the contract.
Anyhow to prepare ourselves for a "fight" on the court we activated lawyers. This lawyer wanted to see this contract, and within 15 minutes he concluded that the contract wasn't valid.
Reason 1: When loki signed this contract, he didn't attain one's majority.
Reason 2: Due to the fact, that loki was legally now allowed to sign a contract, WEG should have contacted his parents for the permission. Therefore, the parents had to sign the contract. Both didn't happen.
After this conclusion, WEG went to the E-Sports association. KeSPA who were always interested in a co-operation with WEG, banned "loki" for one year without a specific reason.
So what we need to keep in mind is, the conclusion of the lawyer wasn't useful at all. Law < KeSPA ?!
Anyways KeSPA closed this case, and started to support WEG.
Fantastic isn't it?
By the way, people who speak Korean should seriously take a look at the official page. Kinda funny, to see how an association tries to push a game.
Ah before I jump to the next point, here are some numbers of the official "Pro-Gamers" in Korea
Star-Craft: 315
...
War-Craft: 25
Fifa: 14
Counter-Strike 9
Quake Series: 0
Reason #5 Mr and Mrs. Non-Sense
It is kinda well-known that top Star-Craft gamers earn a lot of money. Because of that, people tend to assume that all "pro-gamers" earn a lot of money.
In fact, only a few pro-gamers earn that much money. For the very rest, it's some kind of time-wasting job.
But for some people, this gap is the reason for their existence. In the Korean E-Sports community, many people behind the scenes are people who are just talking bullshit 24/7. They try to get your interest, and they use your skills/"fame" to push themselves, to promote themselves to the "top-tier" teams in Korea (referring to the Star-Craft teams or the couple of companies who are able to pay their employees).
If those people set up a meeting with teams, they usually start their speech with the sentence: "As you guys know, Star-Craft is huge ...blablabla... Our/My goal is to provide you guys with tons of money ...blablabla... If you only agree to co-operate with us we will make sure that Counter-Strike (a.i) becomes as big as Star-Craft..."
Mostly, they claim to negotiate with high-profiles companies to establish a financial basic to start such a project.
This may sound cool, but the fact is that none of those people ever fulfilled their promises. This isn't unusual in E-Sports actually, but if your community only consists of those people, teams/players are loosing their motivation to go on.
This might not be the main-reason why CS failed in Korea, but its an important aspect.
Honestly, who wants to invest 8hours a day for nothing? Who wants to keep going, if things never work out with those "companies".
Reason #6 Bad education, No knowledge of the e-sports market
Let's take SK or fnatic or "whatever" as an example. The GM/CEO's of those organizations do have a great knowledge of the market, the teams and the companies.
They know how to act, they know when to intend changes...This, I think, is a proof for their excellence educational background.
As a contrast, most of the people who are managing Korean-teams really seem to buy their graduations on webshops. I mean, even if they have a basic knowledge of business administration they seriously have no clue how to use them on a business.
Pantech Curitel, as an example. The Korean mobile-phone company, Pantech&Curitel, was not bad actually. They had a stable position on the market, and they also had one of the best Star-Craft teams on the world ([Red]Nada is one of them)
When Pantech started to struggle problems (they broke up with Curitel), they renewed the contracts of their "star-"players. Nada received a total amount of not less than 600.000 US$.
Seriously, if your company gets financial problems would you invest such an amount in one single player?
If the Star-Craft market, would provide companies with the same resources/returns of 2002, it would have been an "acceptable"-step but de facto, the market is dying.
Star-Craft is fun to watch, but for peters sake its almost 10 years old. In the next 2 years, there will be def. another "mainstream"-game in Korea.
Anyways, the Star-Craft team of Pantech is now on sale. All teams, who do have the financial possibilities are able to get them. What I'm talking about is, shouldn't it be the job of the CFO to calculate such incidences? Why didn't they invested a smaller amount of money to keep this project alive?
Well, however to make a conclusion...Counter-Strike failed to succeed in Korea because the Korean E-Sports market is falling apart.
People who are lying, ignorant people, corrupted association...I don't think this is the best infrastructure for E-sports.
Most of all, I really hope that people stop saying that "Korea" is the "best E-Sports Country" in the world.
That's simply an illusion.