The real scars of Korean gaming • Hacker News Board

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#61

Post by bad_user » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #57

gbog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be so different with a good friend? If there if someone you are attached to, and if this someone is heading full steam toward a cliff or a dead end, you'll tell them, no? Or do whatever you can to help them. Or maybe you believe that anything about other people is not your concern in any respect? Parenting is not an exception, it is not a different world where values change. It is just the same world, with p…

Happy? Maybe the wrong word choice. Certainly folks can be happy doing these things. Maybe happier than any other job. They probably cannot be wealthy doing those things.

I find it to be a very good choice of words.

The equation for happiness is simple. First of all you need your basic necessities covered, things like food, shelter, clothing, access to health care, plus interactions with other human beings and the possibility of having sex from time to time. Then your expectations have to be smaller than your achievements. When this doesn't happen, it's a recipe for depression.

It's easy to see how sports can lead to unhappiness, but to make matters worse, when comparing soccer or basketball or volley to e-sports, at least from those sports you get a healthy body out of it ;-)

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#62

Post by blumkvist » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #55

__P wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... I'm pretty sure that is not the purpose of sports. The purpose from my perspective is: Advertising, Gambling, and entertainment. Since when has it been at all about exercise? Defensive Linesmen are hardly a "healthy exercise" motivation. Sports that have little to do with exercise: - Racing (Horse, car, hound) - Chess - MMA (While they are super fit, it isn't "healthy") - Boxing - Bowling - Sumo (nothing healthy…

Okay, to clarify: The purpose of sport for the companies that make money from it is, well, making money, and that's from advertising, gambling and entertainment, as you say. But society grants sport a lot of tolerance and even encouragement that it does not grant to other such profit centers. What is the motive for society to do this? Answer: it dates from the time when sport was healthy exercise. Now that the ratche…

You are mixing pro sports with people playing casually. Pro sports is about players pushing themselves to the limit for the audience's entertainment. Modern day gladiators. You think of society like some noble, all-knowing and wise entity. It is not, I'm sorry to tell. Modern day gladiator games is all there is to it and the crowd loves it.

Panem et circenses.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#63

Post by riffraff » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

relic wrote: post #51

solicode wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you see this in a lot of sports actually. I feel the biggest differentiator is whether there's a players union or not. The Minors appear to not have their own (I did not know this). Maybe this has to do with how much money the league generates, but I can't say because I don't know the details. Boxing was already mentioned, but there's also MMA which is in the news right now for this very reason. If you're inter…

You're exactly right about the lack of a players union being the reason for disproportionately low salaries in minor league baseball. The reason they don't have one is because the minor league clubs have no incentive to allow one, and the major league clubs that feed from the minor league systems have no incentive to help either. When there are so many guys willing to play for basically nothing but a shot at the bigs…

football in italy has unions, but the same pattern applies.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#64

Post by seri » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

eertami wrote: post #47

VintageCool wrote: post #8

It is still incredible to watch the Starcraft Brood War games played by FlaSh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLSlqG9f4AQ

I often forget just how good BW was to watch. I used to stay up all night watching ProLeague on some Korean stream, way before Twitch was a thing. SC2 killed it though, but it was just never anywhere near as entertaining to watch.

I still hold that grief. If not for SC2, we could still be watching another Flash vs Jaedong today. So SC2 basically killed a source of entertainment for me.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#65

Post by jacalata » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

throwaway9324 wrote: post #14

pdpi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The plight lies with those who aren't among the top 1% in their already elite field who are subject to the same amount of physical and mental stress and grueling 12 hour practices while making welfare wages That's also no different from other pro sports.

It's plenty of different from other pro sports. The "pro" part largely means getting paid more than it takes to sustain the activity. With some exceptions like pro boxing which isn't exactly a poster boy for ethical practices.

Thats not true in the slightest. I know a pro strongman who doesn't make enough in prize money to cover his training, let alone flying to contests, and I used to work in pro tennis where the bottom tier (still pro players) are borrowing money and living off relatives and national sports grants.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#66

Post by anmilo » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

louithethrid wrote: post #27

frik wrote: post #26

I wonder why real-time-strategy (RTS) is dead outside of the StarCraft 2 e-sport niche. RTS used to be the best selling game category around 2000.

Opening of the market- gaming was suddenly less important then a consumeable story. Everyone can consume a actionflick- not everyone can become a general and really keep a battlefield coordinated. The genre is also not so ideal to tell a story.

right, the "ladder anxiety" in being a reasonably good solo ladder SC2 player can be tough to get over for a new player with each loss, even though the matchmaking algo is pretty good at keeping you at a 50% winrate over time. The multitasking required for RTS is difficult and can be frustrating. It's also unclear how to improve efficiently, if you're not plugged in with the various forums/reddits/youtube, etc.

All of the other team based MOBA/FPS games seem so much more accessible and immediately rewarding. Aside from the current free-to-play boom, I think big companies like Blizzard see this and pour resources into Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm.

As a person who has played starcraft regularly since BW and SC2 beta and still plays today, if I was a kid looking at the competitive gaming landscape today, i feel like there's little chances I would go for and RTS over everything else that's out there.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#67

Post by v3gas » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #49

For context, Flash, with the large scar on his arm had an elo rating in brood war that may have made him the best player of any game -ever-. I think I've seen it noted somewhere that his highest elo was higher than even famous chess grandmasters. This implies that after over a decade of hardcore professional broodwar around the world, he was more dominant at his peak than anyone else has ever been in a game with elo…

Wow! But it doesn't seem like that's the case, several Chess players peaked well beyond that. Magnus Carlsen at 2882, for instance. [1] But that doesn't mean that you're not right, he could possibly be the best player ever.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_top_chess_players...

Doesn't seem like it. Magnus Carlsen has 2882.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#68

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #43

__P wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... I'm pretty sure that is not the purpose of sports. The purpose from my perspective is: Advertising, Gambling, and entertainment. Since when has it been at all about exercise? Defensive Linesmen are hardly a "healthy exercise" motivation. Sports that have little to do with exercise: - Racing (Horse, car, hound) - Chess - MMA (While they are super fit, it isn't "healthy") - Boxing - Bowling - Sumo (nothing healthy…

Boxing, Football/Soccer, Rugby (which was the precursor to American Football), and so on, were all codified and set up as formal sports to fulfill explicitly moral/social/physical purposes. And for a long time, they had rules banning professional participation, in an attempt to avoid the sort of problem's we're discussing, and protect the sport's role within society.

>And for a long time, they had rules banning professional participation, in an attempt to avoid the sort of problem's we're discussing, and protect the sport's role within society.

I have never heard of any rules against professionalism in soccer, or even norms about it. Boxing has always been a sport where the very best were pros. The gentleman's code bit was in the rules against biting, eye gouging or using your legs. Even rugby is at best half true. Rugby split into union and league over professionalism. I believe union in France akways had sh shamateurs as well. I don't know enough about American Football to comment but what I do know about American sports culture does not incline me to believe there was ever a ban on pro play.

Insofar as I'm familiar with a sport you're wrong on all counts except rugby union.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#69

Post by rwallace » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

blumkvist wrote: post #62

rwallace wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, to clarify: The purpose of sport for the companies that make money from it is, well, making money, and that's from advertising, gambling and entertainment, as you say. But society grants sport a lot of tolerance and even encouragement that it does not grant to other such profit centers. What is the motive for society to do this? Answer: it dates from the time when sport was healthy exercise. Now that the ratche…

You are mixing pro sports with people playing casually. Pro sports is about players pushing themselves to the limit for the audience's entertainment. Modern day gladiators. You think of society like some noble, all-knowing and wise entity. It is not, I'm sorry to tell. Modern day gladiator games is all there is to it and the crowd loves it. Panem et circenses.

That's because reality mixes them. If it was just a case of professional sports ruining a few hundred lives for entertainment like in the decadent years of the Roman Empire, well that would be bad but on the basis of sheer numbers it would be small potatoes compared to things like a million deaths a year from road accidents or the major powers treating Syria and Ukraine like puppies fighting over chew toys, so I probably wouldn't bother to comment. But it's creeping into the general culture. For example: how many Americans have played football at least for a while in school? Now consider that everyone who plays American football suffers irreversible brain damage, and the total harm becomes substantial even on the scale of bad things happening in the world at large.

Re: The real scars of Korean gaming

#70

Post by Macha » Sat, Jun 06, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #58

frik wrote: post #26

I wonder why real-time-strategy (RTS) is dead outside of the StarCraft 2 e-sport niche. RTS used to be the best selling game category around 2000.

Mostly because designing for e-Sports has a massive effect on options and creativity of an RTS - keeping the game balanced and fair for competitive play comes with a massive tradeoffs in creativity, faction diversity and player options (especially if the developer does not have large amounts of time for balance testing). And since for some reason everyone wants a piece of that pie the RTSes have become a bit... bland…

Add to that the level of increased communication and strategy available via internet and especially sites like youtube. Now everyone has the tools and info to tell which strategy is the best, at lower levels you're often better suited to just follow the exact steps someone else used and you'll win, but that's boring. Not doing it implies always losing however.

There's room for creativity only at the very bottom and the very top.