It sure was difficult to come to that conclusion.

Usually getting to a point where a due date is coming up means crunch time. It means putting in about 150%  of yourself until the task at hand is complete. Since I’m not getting compensated for sharing my opinions with folks on a larger ESFI platform, I decided that folks really didn’t want me doing something lame and speculating on what the year will being the sports community as a whole, and instead I have decided to focus like a laser on one particular aspect of the broadcasting element in consuming competitive games.

Hitting the proverbial reset button on the process was a mental relief and hassle at the same time. Sure, this let me come up with an idea that I might be able to ramble on about in a more persuasive manner, but now I have the added pressure of having to deliver on the promise that I would be contributing a column to the site. A recent addition to the editors of the site expressed concern in not having enough opinion to read on the website, and I fully intend to have something that might make this person proud to have donated his time to further games journalism in the competitive market.

With regards to gaming journalism: I want ESFI to grow. I’m not sure that I agree with the notions that there needs to be more than one ESFI for the journalism scene to be considered on fire. We’re doing the best we can ot continue producing content that covers SC2, Dota 2, CS and even upcoming titles that are expected to make a pretty big splash in the scene. I don’t think that having to do so requires many different websites that compete with each other to get the news and features that the community deserves. Instead, it’s more about breaking the power that large communities that teams have erected around themselves such as EvilGeniuses, TeamLiquid, vVv and other teams used to help build up the number of supporters and fans they could report to potential sponsors.

The reason ESFI hasn’t blown up per se is the fact that there are better venues for the PR machines behind each of these teams to release the information that needs to be covered. Depending on the community that the release is posted to, there might be massaging of the message intended for the general public. There might be a few details left out (think tournaments and where they were getting their funding from) and perhaps some fluffy speculation left in (but only when it serves the organizations interests to fully hype-up something).

It’ll be a long time coming when ESFI steps into its rightful place as a top-tier source for news through-out the entire gaming scene, but that’s because what’s working for teams and organizations is… well,… working right now. And that mantra about the not fixing what isn’t broke thing? That’s standard operating procedure for keeping things under control.

As far as owners, organizers and sponsors are concerned, there is no need to hit the reset button and give a site like ESFI a chance. They have the places to deliver their message and the audience to pass it on organically without too much work. There’s no need for comment or analysis from the audience outside of what’s necessary for the circlejerk of novelty Reddit accounts and forum troll fodder to continue adding to the list of reasons to give a shit about the community.

As ESFI grows, sources and players that might have avoided giving third-party interviews might not be so cold to the idea of journalism as a manner in which to increase awareness of something that needs more of spotlight as far as they’re concerned. But that’s ultimately the point of ESFI—to be fans of players and the games they play. It’s not to help the proliferation of the PR machine and help them control the message. It’s to report on news and share speculation on things in a unique enough manner with a goal to help the scene become more mature.

At least that’s what I’d like for ESFI to be—unafraid to hit the reset button.

I also want to make it plain that I’m not out to make enemies with this rant. It’s a rant. RANT. It might be on a sensitive matter, but trust me, I wrote this on not a lot of sleep after work one day and edited it during my lunch break today. I thought about scrapping it entirely, but decided instead to just post it. I’ll get back to esports and technology tomorrow.

I’m not a fan of the 99% and 1% terminology. Yes, I understand that it’s talking about the tax brackets of folks that might be protesting or of wealthy individuals who have moral shortcomings, but assuming that an overwhelming majority of people agree that protests, general strikes and even inciting mobs is the way to get Washington’s attention about anything is a mistake. The following ¹ is the latest example of what I mean:

As far as the real protest is concerned, these 99% are a part of the elite.

Now, I know that the caption has really made my point here, but I think it needs to be said—ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? That’s exactly what we need—one of the successful ventures that produced arguably one of the biggest success stories of the past decade are to be pitied when their tax bill comes due?

The article sounds more like a complaint than highlight the difference in proportions of taxable income certain brackets get. So, the author speculates that 99% of Facebook employees are complaining about how much they’re going to have to pay in taxes because they just worked hard for a bunch of money? What is to be done about this? Those under management of the business are to be given tax cuts because of the shock of their recently matured Facebook stock?

You’d think that by working in startups like these that they might realize that success might bring a new set of challenges and issues to deal with. The saying goes: mo’ money, mo’ problems… but you’d think that you’d be able to pay off the problems in short order with the ‘more money’ you made.

Then again, perhaps that why I can’t exactly wrap my head around the need to protest at the drop of the hat for anything. Maybe that’s because I’m considerably a bit selfish when it comes to problems that don’t affect me, or maybe that’s because I consider that my life situation doesn’t warrant a chant towards the government for any misfortune that might happen.

But back to the article for a second—it doesn’t mention Facebook employees that are upset by the prospect of paying taxes for the boon that they’re getting out of this entire deal. Perhaps the article is a bit academic in that case, but I still have a problem placing Facebook and 99% in the same sentence.

Note the circlejerk clearly visible in the headline and the second paragraph.

While I am what one might call an Apple fanboy, I can’t help but feel that the whole objective of this story is to:

• hype up their startup-hypemachine (which recently happened),
• note that cool developers also use Android,
• remind us (unnecessarily) that Android is still around.

I wonder what was going through the writer’s mind when she was writing this piece. It’s not as if Android really needs any sort of leg up on the competition—and that’s a discussion for another time, honestly.

The self-serving part of this article just hurts my brain more than anything. I can understand that the observation had to be made, but this could’ve been made in another article, and not masked as a writer’s experience and thoughts on the evening. We know what they think about the evening—they chose the winners of the event. They could just as easily wrap that up in a sizable review post for the event.

Then again, I generally avoid TechCrunch for reasons like these.

Then again, like most blogs that rely on advertising revenue—certainly the case with TC since the acquisition by AOL—this manner of link baiting can’t be helped anymore.

I’m not sure what to think about this.

On one hand, it’s the validation that an entire industry has been looking forward to for the past three or four years. It’s the legitimacy that social media service providers have been looking for ever since the Facebook released its Beacon update to promote more advertisements on its service.

On the other hand, I don’t even really use Facebook anymore. I loathe the requirements of certain websites that ask me for my Facebook credentials. I haven’t made use of the messaging solution that made waves when Facebook.com email addresses were nothing but unconfirmed speculation.

But it’s helpful to remember that Facebook isn’t about the individual users anymore. It’s about the society of people that use the Internet in any sort of regular capacity. Even though I might not like everything that it stands for and the manner in which all of its information is used to build the perfect ad-serving system, there are hundreds of millions folks that use it everyday.

That’s why the IPO is speculatively going to be in the billions of dollars: Facebook has become the best web advertisement serving mechanism on the web. It’s not about it being the best space for a user to share their life’s particulars. It’s not about connecting with people that you haven’t talked to in years.

Facebook will ultimately become about what kills the enthusiasm behind many social networks that try to expand and grow beyond their station: the bottom line.

You’d think that with the work schedule that I have that I’d be able to find the time to write on my own, but that’s certainly not the case as I find that I would be labeled a loner of sorts if I didn’t associate with folks outside of the workplace. Office hours are great… and then everyone else decides to do things in the evenings.

I dunno where I was going with that, but being able to ramble again is a quite refreshing feeling. And at the risk of sounding like a whining emo kid, I have had a lot of my plate in the past two months compared to the stress that I felt over the majority of the year 2011.

But tonight, I write.

Everyone needs to relax, it’s completely OK to use TL and r/starcraft together. Each site has its strengths and weaknesses, just accept each one for what it is and use both.

There’s really no need to try to make this subreddit into what you think it should be, because much like the hot hacker from “Transformers” believes about the code that hacked the US military network, a subreddit’s personality is a living organism, it changes every day. If people want to talk about SC2 celebrities, let them.

That’s the beauty of Reddit and the upvote downvote system. Don’t hate it, embrace it. ¹

HotBid makes plenty of sense here. /r/starcraft is a community that consistently thinks of itself in the highest possible regard even though the most common of failures associated with any public forum come along for the ride. Team Liquid has this same failing, but it has a history of being an environment where the discussion actually meant something.

In Reddit, as other posters in the thread would go on to point out, the point-whoring system that is inherent in the system sets up a situation where the lines of post quality and quantity are often blurred.

Moderation is virtually nonexistent, aside from when the user base demands some sort of change and a token change is made to calm the /r/starcraft hive mind. I’d prefer if things stay the way that they are, though.

The freedoms of a more-or-less unmoderated experience on the subreddit have its benefits over a controlled experience such as Team Liquid. Then again, true StarCraft fanatics are more common at the latter compared to those on the progressive edge of the community.

I just went out to lunch and forgot to post about any unusual events that happened during that time on a social media site.Womp womp.

29 December 2011 13:01 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@bcarr

Brad Carr

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 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 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.

I really can’t emphasize how important it was to have coherent and well-respected casters bring the final match of the tournament to everyone. I didn’t have to hear someone who wasn’t sure of what was going on and didn’t have to survive through the slow, soft and confidence-lacking play-calling.

DayJWhe9t on the other hand, performed well and even kept me in the loop with subtle hints of locations and movements even as I listened to merely the audio of the cast while driving around for a bit yesterday evening.

I wish radio was still a thing, sometimes.