I love money. You probably do, too, unless you’re worried about obesity-related deaths among wallets. What’s not to love? It’s green. It smells nice. It lets me acquire other nice-smelling things, like a girlfriend. And, unlike a girlfriend, it’s never disappointed, never scolds you for playing video games too long, and sometimes it even rewards you for doing chores, like when you find a crisp, clean c-note in the dryer or ten pounds of pennies in your sofa.
Nine out of ten people agree: money is great. The tenth person was too busy hording money to answer the survey.
Unfortunately, for all its virtues, it’s not an elixir that fixes all our problems, even in the competitive gaming community. The recipe for a successful eSports league isn’t like Easy Mac; we can’t just add one ingredient, even one as powerful as money, and turn hard noodles and nasty cheese into a tasty meal. And what’s more, we can’t afford to wait around for a magic fix that isn’t coming, when waiting around means the playoffs in our favorite leagues are nothing more than a disappointing extension of the regular season.
Somehow, I think it’s going to be different, every season. This time, there’s more incentive. The teams are better, and the competition will inspire teams to be active and prove that they’re the best. No more forfeit wins in the playoffs, no more inactivity and pugging matches on the biggest stage. Everybody has something to prove this time around, and fans will finally get to see motivated teams instead of blowouts and excuses about inactivity. And every damn season it’s the same thing, over and over.
The CGS Region 1 Finals were horribly disappointing; they didn’t even do a best-of-three format, which is practically unforgivable. If anything qualifies as an extension of the regular season, this was it. There weren't any changes to the format, the other teams just happened to have the day off. The CAL and CEVO playoffs are riddled with forfeits, cramped schedules, or teams that have roster problems and/or intermittent practice schedules. I’m not sure what happened with the CGS, but if you follow CAL or CEVO, there’s an underlying message behind any of the excuses you read: if there was more prize money, all these problems would be fixed. Teams would practice harder, prepare better, and be generally more dedicated because it would be worth the effort.
I wouldn’t completely disagree with that, but it doesn’t address the whole issue. The problem isn’t the amount of money, it’s the whole reward.
To illustrate, let’s get away from eSports for a second. Out of 100 average sports fans, how many know that the winners of the Super Bowl (second story), World Series, and NBA Finals all get money for taking home the title? I consider myself a huge baseball fan, and I didn’t know they got a bonus. The cash makes up a tiny, tiny part of the reward. Or, put another way: it’s the freakin’ championship! You don’t see the players celebrating with oversized checks. They all want to touch the trophy.
If you want an even better example, think about poker for a second. I can’t think of a game that’s more about the money than poker is. They even bring it out on serving plates (SERVING PLATES!) when a tournament gets down to heads-up. Then, when somebody wins, what’s one of the questions you hear pretty often (specifically at the WSOP)? “What’s more important, the money, or the bracelet?” Never mind that people will answer “the bracelet” when they’ve just won $500,000, isn’t just asking that question enough to indicate that money is only part of the incentive?
This is where eSports runs into trouble, in my mind. We’re waiting around for the big, armored truck to arrive, but there are other ways to make something valuable. Instead of hoping more money will come in from sponsors, leagues should be taking smaller steps to improve the quality of play and the incentive.
Again, let’s look at professional sports. The end of the regular season is practically a relief. We’re finally done with our Brussels sprouts, and we can have some ice cream. Just reaching the playoffs is a big deal because the regular seasons are a war of attrition. The NFL regular season lasts four months, the NBA’s six months, and I think the MLB regular season never actually stops, it just collapses from exhaustion on a regular schedule. There’s a competitive reason for making the seasons long (the best teams will win more often), but a by-product is that the championships are less common, and hence more valuable. Would everybody be jacked up about winning the Super Bowl if there was another one coming in four months? Probably, but not as much if they had to wait a full year.
I’m not proposing anything radical for eSports, here, but I think leagues should drop the “play ‘em if you got ‘em” rationale. That is, if you have enough days and teams to fit in another season, get it done. Source was released in November of 2004, and by the end of November 2007, the ninth season of CAL CS:S will almost be over. I’m not sure when the first season actually started (I’m guessing January 2005, since a full season couldn’t be finished before Christmas), but there’s basically been three seasons every year.
If you cut that down to two, it makes a big difference. You could have a four month regular season, 30 day playoff, and a dedicated offseason month. The specifics might be different (like a preseason in there somewhere), but I think that’s the general idea. It’s hard to imagine extending the regular season considering how volatile teams are, and maybe that’s true, but it would also mean that chemistry, maturity, and dedication are valued even more because of the format. Having a disgruntled player shoot your team in the foot is a much bigger deal when you can’t play again for six months, and teams would adjust to that. It’s not worse, it just places more of a priority on building a team and making character part of all the recruiting decisions.
The other huge thing leagues can do is just build up the playoffs more. There needs to be more exposure, especially regarding SourceTVs. (I’m also including myself in this criticism, because I could have done a better job of publicizing the CAL playoffs thus far. I plan to fix this mistake.) During the regular season, I usually caught wind of a SRCTV fifteen minutes before the match actually started. Consistently, anywhere from 40-50 people showed up on that much of a late notice. The market is there. People want to see the matches, and I can’t help but wonder how many people would show up to a good match if the information was released a day or two in advance. A hundred? Two hundred? One billion? You get the point.
Would these things turn around eSports? No, they wouldn’t, but that’s part of the point. There is no Kero Kero cola, no rejuvenation potion, no spell that’s going to fix everything. It’s a matter of taking small steps forward to build something that’s a little bit better than the earlier versions. Sometimes things won’t turn out the way we want them to, and the ideas themselves might seem crazy. I have no idea how it would turn out if you actually extended the CAL season to four months; maybe you’d only have two teams alive at the end, or maybe it would help promote stability in the long-term.
But I do know this: I’m tired of being disappointed by the playoffs, and I don’t see any reason to keep making the same mistakes and not trying alternative solutions while we wait for money that might never come.
