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How to fail a league (aka WSVG)
By Andreas 'bds' Thorstensson
Sep 13, 2007 12:23
To run a successful esport league these days are quite hard. You need a serious and structured organization, a high value set of sponsors, a dedicated and experienced staff, add a well known brand and you have come very far.
The next crucial step in making it a success are the games.
Do not try to create an esport community from scratch for games that don't have them (ie Guitar Hero and Fight Night). These can be smaller tournaments for the entertainment and maybe they will grow and become major games in the future.
Do not remove the most popular PC based esport games there is today (i.e Counter-Strike 1.6 and Warcraft III). You have the community, you just need to add the games. How hard can it be?
Do not focus on games with a very small user base with, to be honest, no real fix stars (i.e Quake IV). Guess people will be pissed about this comment, but that is how it is. Most of the interesting players quit the game a long time ago, and Quake IV is just not very popular. It reminds me of the Painkiller era.
Do not add a format which you think would work out but the community knows it won't (i.e World of Wacraft 3v3).
Do not overdo prize money for games that aren't that big yet. That will evolve with the popularity of the game. Most teams would have played the WoW tournament with a 4th of that prize money this year. Then when you have the community with you, slowly raise and raise.
And last but not least, listen to the community and its teams.
The next crucial step in making it a success are the games.
Do not try to create an esport community from scratch for games that don't have them (ie Guitar Hero and Fight Night). These can be smaller tournaments for the entertainment and maybe they will grow and become major games in the future.
Do not remove the most popular PC based esport games there is today (i.e Counter-Strike 1.6 and Warcraft III). You have the community, you just need to add the games. How hard can it be?
Do not focus on games with a very small user base with, to be honest, no real fix stars (i.e Quake IV). Guess people will be pissed about this comment, but that is how it is. Most of the interesting players quit the game a long time ago, and Quake IV is just not very popular. It reminds me of the Painkiller era.
Do not add a format which you think would work out but the community knows it won't (i.e World of Wacraft 3v3).
Do not overdo prize money for games that aren't that big yet. That will evolve with the popularity of the game. Most teams would have played the WoW tournament with a 4th of that prize money this year. Then when you have the community with you, slowly raise and raise.
And last but not least, listen to the community and its teams.
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Yeah I think the main problem with WSVG was that they were trying to dictate the community - by bringing in a load of random games for their tournaments, instead of tried and tested games that already have huge communities behind them.
It was like they wanted to be the instigators of new and "fresh" communities for unknown games like Fight Night and Guitar Hero - like that was ever gonna happen..
P.S. Aren't you supposed to be coding 24/7? ..no time for blogs! :p
I am, just opened another window in emacs to write my thoughts down!
Now back to galleries...
Although it's a big hit against WoW who just started to evolve as an esport, but again, I'd much rather see tournament organisers hosting 5vs5 tournaments instead of 3vs3 since the Blizzard World Finals are far from enough to keep an active and competitive community.
haha
CPL can definitely take back their spot in the US if they play their cards right. And regarding ESL and CGS in Europe, I think its more a question of if CGS can go head to head with ESL.
CPL was in a minute of destruction itself.
But the "wrong" choice of Games has not been the only thing they failed with right from the start.
Tbh, you know as business professional as good as me that the concept that WSVG pushed through from the beginning couldn't work out because face it or not, nobody cares about games like Guitar Hero and Fight Night Round 3 that’s something a Matt Ringel had to learn the hard way in the end.
As someone knowing the Industry from both sides I think the WSVG just followed the standards of the CPL, they have been overpromising and underdelivering, not just to the Community, to their Sponsors as well as it seems.
From my point of view WSVG always have been looking down on most Teams as the Big Brother with Money instead of working closely with them, because if they would have done so there would have been no sense for GH and FNR 3.
You can’t kick the scene in the balls and say eat this ( GH & FNR or even Q4 with a >30 Players active scene on a professional level nowadays) or die just because you throw some money in the pot. Same goes for CGS with their Franchising System and CS:Source or World of Warcraft.
If you make decisions over the head of the Big Teams and opinion leaders inside the Community as well as the Community itself you simply did not get how it’s working and you’ll end up with no one caring about you or worst case, make Sponsors leave the eSports scene forever because you simply can’t deliver what you promised them to get the Money.
Just my two cents
P.S: Andreas, you should add a feature to the blogs that allows to answer a Blog post on your own SK Blog and automatically sets a “Trackback” inside the comments of the original Blog Post.
I blame valve and source
It sad how the retarded people always get in touch of the great money within esports.
IANAWoWer but as far as I can see, WoW 3v3 did work, probably far better than 5v5 would have considering the extra expenses to attend and the reduction in prizes per person.
ESWC has had 5 good years featuring 1.6 and WC3, they satisfy the community (national qualifiers, the best teams, well informed website, hltv, scorebots) and draw in thousands of people to its finals. But they still lost their title sponsor and had reduction in prize money, and now the event's future is in doubt
Where did WSVG fail? Presentation (WoW on live stream, CBS show was terribly done), execution of events (the LANWAR walkout, not planning for bots/HLTV/Q4TV), informing on the website (during events the website was useless for results and information - link running running the tournament with displaying results on the site is a good start!, after events there were often mistakes in rankings), promotion (other than intel, can you name any other sponsors off your head? Took me some time to remember the PC sponsor was Dell)
Fight Night was clearly a waste of time but I suspect EA may have paid for that
Finally, CS. Keeping in mind 3/5 events were in North America, CGS has cast a huge shadow over CS in the US, choosing 1.6 would have got the Euros for sure but would the top US teams have been able to attend the events? (WSVG sponsors are North American remember, they want to see US teams). The exclusive TV rights would have prevented it being on CBS for sure (that and the time slot), and back then CGS could have pushed for exclusive online video coverage too
WoW 3v3 turned out to be about sending the most players, since you changed setup depening on the team you faced.
5v5 with fixed setup would be the best for sure.
#27 Indeed, AMEN!
They said they were packing it in because of little profit, which isn't a done deal, there were plenty of options available to the WSVG to correct that problem and they tried not one of them, they just gave up.
The WSVG set out to become the CPL of 2004/05, the center of the competitive communities with huge influence in America and in Europe.
When that failed, for many reasons, the morale I'm sure was dropping, and after the disastrous event where administrators where walking out in droves, you can bet your balls not one person was feeling confident about doing more events.
The difference between the WSVG and a company like the CPL is the CPL won’t stop when things don’t look good, they’ll keep on moving and try bring the profits up with something new, the WSVG were just too lazy and decided it would be much easier to run a website than a world tour.
There are a lot of variables that contributed to the WSVG going under (The CGS, LANWAR mess, bad events, and poor games with no community…) but the main one was lack of motivation, I myself lack the motivation to go into anymore depth so I’m leaving it short.
The CPL is also a sinking ship though, if they manage to make it to the launch of Severity and it bombs, you can wave them bye-bye; they don’t have it in them to take another WiC/F.E.A.R sized hit.
A lot of people were under the impression that the WSVG was so big it was unsinkable; we all know how well that worked out for the Titanic, but a lot more people feel the exact same way about the CPL.
The point is, don't discourage people from trying new things, because the CPL's and WSVG's aren't going to be there forever, we need new events, I certainly don't like the thought of having one event (CGS) in Europe for certain games for the next however many years.
If something doesn't work, try something else, but don't just give up because there's a way to make a buck faster and with less overheads, if that's your attitude then don't even bother throwing your hat into the ring.
E-sports is still very much in its infancy, and the last thing we need are companies in the public eye setting examples like "If things don't go your way, pack it up and find another way to make easier money.".
Just to give you an example of how detrimental the WSVG story is to e-sports as a whole, how many of the WSVG sponsors do you think are going to want to throw their hat back in the ring? Knowing now how unstable the community really can be if you don't know what you're doing, and few of them do.
Everyone go thank Matt Ringel and GMP for fucking you all in the ass.
And, as ESWC executive said, Quake4 is this kind of game for e-sport. Maybe not the only one, but clearly one of them. I don't play Quake4, but I admire people who do well at it.
This was what was meant to be done with console games Guitar Hero, in my opinion. But is was a failure because to run successfully such a show, a federating game is needed - as bds stated in this blog.