In eSports, rescheduled matches have become as common as Rex Grossman turnovers (sigh). Most of the time it doesn’t matter; not many people care if a CAL-M match gets changed without warning. But the “professional” leagues need to get a better scheduling policy, because right now it favors teams and leagues while the fans get crapped on.
Matches are usually rescheduled because of player obligations, most commonly appointments, family, school and girlfriends. (I like to think of these as the four horsemen of eSports scheduling. Family is war, school is pestilence, appointments are famine. Girlfriends, of course, are death.) From a team’s perspective, it makes sense to reschedule a match if they can’t field their starting five. The team’s goal is to win matches. Winning earns them get a higher playoff seed and a better chance of winning money. So if 3D has to reschedule to win money, then that’s what they’re going to do. If the Lakers could delay their games after Kobe gets injured, I’m sure they would.
But leagues should have the fan’s interests in mind. This is where professional leagues step in, and eSports leagues need to step up. The situation goes something like this: Team A has five members and can’t play on default day (either through an unexpected situation or a known absence), but team B has six members and can play during the week with a backup. The admin rules that the match should be rescheduled during the week because both teams can play, and team B just has to play with a backup. Team B gets punished for being on-time and having a backup player available.
It’s inevitable that admins will make errors in judgment and end up punishing teams haven’t done anything wrong. Instead of having it come down to an admin’s decision, just eliminate the possibility altogether. If CEVO instituted a no-rescheduling policy for CEVO-P, do you think any of the important teams would drop the league and go back to CAL? If a team can’t field five at the designated time, they forfeit. If a team member has some emergency, the team plays with a backup. (As I understand it, this is the purpose of having a backup.) It’s the easiest way, and it’s also the best thing for spectators, who otherwise must constantly check schedules, websites and IRC channels for rescheduling. Instead they can plan dinner around the 3D/coL match.
If a team does need to reschedule for some unforeseen reason (like three-four players losing their internet connection, the eSports equivalent of a rainout) then there needs to be a system for letting the fans know about it. It should be reported on the league website, and spammed in HLTV if it’s already running. NBA fans aren’t in seats watching Kwame Brown do a lay-up drill while the game is being cancelled and moved, but I’m sitting in HLTV with two hundred other people wondering when the match will start. It’s already twenty minutes late, there are only four members messing around in the pre-game and I’m waiting for information about why the match was delayed. None comes. The only way I find information is through the forums, where the message was passed down from Team A to fan, to another fan until somebody finally posted it on GotFrag (I call this phenomenon the Six Degrees of Kevin Wang). If it’s just one person that’s missing due to an emergency, then the show must go on.
The only major difference between eSports and professional sports is that the fans are directly paying for organizational expenses (read: salaries) through ticket sales. HLTV is free. But professional eSports organizations still rely on their fans as income, it just comes via sponsorships. Those big sponsors like Intel, nVidia, and AMD aren’t interested in your 8-0 CAL-M team. They’re interested in 3D and coL because their advertising exposure is much, much larger. Take away that fan base, and 3D looks a lot different. Without fans, the Lakers are just a bunch of guys getting some exercise.
Maybe I’ve become jaded, but I don’t even try to connect to HLTV unless I know the match is already live. I’ve been jerked around too many times and I don’t really care if I miss a couple rounds. I’d rather show up in the fourth round of a match I know is being played than wait twenty minutes for a match that never happens. I don’t bother to look at match times because I know they get changed without warning, and without notice. This problem isn’t going to destroy the foundation of eSports or prevent the DirecTV tournament; it’s just one more example of a small difference between professional sports and eSports.
