When I opened my outlook today, there was a press release that grabbed my attention, not because it wasn’t the usual marketing bullshit I’m reading on a day to day basis, but because it promised a big change in the gaming industry.

In particular in the professional gaming scene, so I thought it would be a good share and discussion topic here on SK Gaming, just like my last article.

I was greeted, by a nice piece of spam, by @Slasher aka Rod Breslau which made me even more interested in who is behind that whole mysterious thing and what is up with it. Fortunately one thing upfront it’s not Scott Insolvencya. Thanks god the new CPL is not touching G7 territory and had the bright idea to found “THE WORLD WIDE FEDERATION OF GAMING!” In a galaxy far far away....

No seriously, let us get back on topic. World Wide Federation of Gaming just sounds brilliant, don't you think so? Me neither and I am also going to tell you why.



For people that have been around the esports scene a bit longer, this idea sounds very familiar, some may call it the big American fail, others the black hole of sponsorship money, but in the end it was just three letters that tried to change professional gaming / eSports and failed epically, CGS – Championship Gaming Series.

I guess “Learn from the pros” is just a term for saying “We take Visa, MasterCard and American Express for you to train half an hour with a professional of your choice, cash upfront no refunds” which would be the equivalent to ESEA.

That that didn’t work out well either is also well known.
But WWFOG (WTFOMG), who came up with that name anyway, thought about another approach of the whole thing. Instead of having Sponsors and TV Stations paying teams they had this brilliant idea to let you and me, the gaming community, pay in addition to possible Sponsorships and advertising contracts they "might" get by you guys signing up.



I think it is a great pleasure for every gamer to spend his hard earned money on "access to the forums", or the "chance" of being drafted by a pro team. If you see the odds, to get somewhere “as part of the community” is more than questionable, the WWFOG needs to make a profit so they will not let you make any business decisions and even if they have 24 Pro Teams with 10 players each, the chance to be part of that is going near zero as a casual gamer.

If the project doesn’t attract enough people, it is going down with your money in their pockets pretty fast. How much of a chance do most people really stand against a competition of 50 – 100k gamers who are interested and involved in semi-professional gaming?



Let us summarize all this. This is really the perfect example of how you should not take care of your customers; do these guys really think gamers are that stupid?

So you can sign up right now at the WWFOG for $10 a year, they promise tournaments, they promise competitions, they promise they have over 200 pro gamers, but actually just listed a few b-list names in their press release. They also want you to pay for the project in addition to other ways of grabbing your money like the “gaming commerce site”. But what have they done until now to get your trust and money, or even a glimpse of return of their promise? Nothing.

Someone really is trying to drain money from esports' pocket, and after I had a good laugh where the company is established it all made sense. Viva Las Vegas! There is really nothing more to say than that you should be very cautious about this project. Though you should visit their websiteand make your own mind up. Anyway the really interesting thing with WWFOG is, and I’d really like to see your answers and opinions on this, which eSports Tournament/League related project that came out of the states is still alive, really doing something for the scene and also trustworthy?

John "eSports" Doe's personal list:



So the question here really is what’s wrong? Why can’t American eSport entrepreneurs be as successful as European or Asians and do you think WWFOG will be any different and why? Feel free to discuss.