Reeling back on the sharing.

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/bcarr/statuses/152449267569655808″]

I haven’t been posting as often as I should have been lately. This isn’t from a lack of want to do so, really, but a lack in available brainpower to come up with something to write to this space. I make this excuse every so often, but this time it really is for more than simply being lazy.

If it weren’t for a couple of pretty monumental and life-changing personal/family situations, I’d be on this path towards getting my upcoming column for ESFI out of the conceptual part of the development process and into the side of the process that can be proved to exist.

There are emotions that I want to convey and thoughts I have on subjects that aren’t limited to technology and esports. Eventually, I will write about these things. I will give no fucks. You have been warned.

 

The acceptance of your peers.

For as many strides that ESFI has made in the recent weeks, it seems like it can’t catch a break with the critical inner circle of esports personalities, namely InControl on last evening’s State of the Game podcast.

The lack of faith and abundance of skepticism that the established SC2 personalities have is well-deserved—I won’t deny them that. Anyone that claims to be identifying issues or reporting developments in their scene is creeping on their turf and it stands to reason that they could potentially lose the position of relevance with regards to news in the community should a site like ESFI begin to release the content that they have even been asking the community to provide for the sake of itself.

I’m not speaking for ESFI corporately, but I do think I can opine that I believe the mission of ESFI is to report what is happening within the scenes we can investigate with a fair and even-handed approach to coverage. I am not affiliated with any league organization or public team and I’ve never strived to be one of the folks who are. It’d be nice to have that sort of access all of the time and to get on the inside of some circles, but I don’t think that’s what my current goal is. I just want to be able to bring either news that lacks bias (in as much as it is possible) and share it with the community.

I’m sure there are those out there who just want to rock the boat, but that’s not really what I’m into, granted the situation might arise in which rocking the boat might be inevitable, but hopefully the community would be ready for that sort of turbulence if it came down to publishing an exposé written by ESFI—talk about a rock and a hard place.

I suppose it’d be nice if the community could just see the effort as what it is and instead of just bracing for the worst. There are some who are all for what we’re doing, but I just hope the skeptical amongst the remainder can limit their negativity for what we’re trying to accomplish.

The numbers game.

MLG recently released its self-collected statistics about its 2011 season regarding viewership numbers and other assorted facts about the three different games that it featured and the DotA-clone exhibition added to the second-half of the 2011 season. I added this post to ESFI referring to the press release and the infographic that is being distributed with the press release.

The infographic is a nice amalgamation of all of the little tips and factoids that might have been dropped into the press release itself and presents the information in a way that it doesn’t take someone reading the entire letter to everyone in the industry.

Throwing the numbers back at DreamHack might have given it a few badass points to play around with for next year, but it still remains the fact that the other events were better organized throughout the year of 2011. I know this is going to change a lot as we come into the new season for MLG 2012, but until then, do numbers really name the king of the leagues?

I’m not particularly sure that numbers can make that distinction alone. Sure they separate the NASLs from the MLGs, but to me, it seems like the competition at NASL Season 2’s final was more nail biting than most of MLG’s lesser events.

This year might not be the year of the numbers quite yet, but look out 2012.