With all talk about sponsorships, pro gaming, the CPL I feel we haven't heard from the cynics enough. Lets face it, its much more entertainment to be had from being real grumpy compared to being happy. So just for my enjoyment, lets have some pro gaming bashing here.
Those that have sponsorships. Enjoy it while you can. Once the companies figure out what this is all about it will dry out. For those that get airplane tickets to LANS, enjoy it. Suck the sponsors dry. If they are stupid enough to give you money, exploit it. For those that win a few bucks CPL competitions, save the money for something nice.
Anyways, lets get down to the bashing shall we. The CPL/pro gaming will never succeed. Below are just some of the reasons why:
* Most of the teams/players that are sponsored don't give a crap, the don't have any urge/ability to do anything positive for their sponsors. Would you like to have a spokesperson saying "FU MORON" to other players on public servers? Of course there are nice guys in top clans, but they are 15-20 year old males, with all that it implies. They just want a free ride, and at the moment some of them have sponsors that provide them with that.
* The target audience simply don't care. Most gamers don't give a crap about pro gaming, clanwars etc. Would you if you are a big company throw a lot of money into something that only 3000-4000 people WORLDWIDE give a crap about? Hell, even tractorpulling has more people interested in their "sport". Sure, those 3000-4000 are very active and very vocal, but that doesn't make them more. For all I care the 3000-4000 can be 30000, and that will not change anything. And yes, I KNOW that Starcraft is big in Korea. When the CPL move their office to Seoul and focus on Korean gaming you can use that as an argument. But as it stands Korea is an anomaly that has very little to do with "pro gaming" outside of korea.
* The target audience are non-consumers in every sense of the word. They don't have money to buy stuff, and when they can steal stuff they will (movies, software) etc. They are just a very uninteresting demographic for companies. Sure, they will be the consumers of the future but they will most likely have widely different consumer patterns by then.
* Dreams that games will somehow break into "mainstream" (the holy graal Mr Munoz is chasing) are just dreams. You can't even reach 99% of the people who actually play the same game. If they aren't interested, why the hell should anybody else be?
* CPL are not one step closer to it being a real sport today then it was 4 years ago. CPL lives and dies solely on the money Intel and others are pumping in. They aren't generating any money at all. Their target audience are not prepared to pay a single cent (there are probably a few that are, but will that be able to support even the network setup on a LAN? Of course not) for their "sport". If the CPL would ask you to pay a dollar for downloading a demo from CPL events, to support the CPL growing - most would simply DCC them amongst themselves.
* Sure the CPL can live in a state of Status Quo as long as their sponsors pump in money. Will their sponsors be willing to shoulder the sole financial responsibility for gaming growing? Of course not, get real. Seeing as CPL is 5 years old, this is probably as good as it will get. Enjoy it while it lasts.
I hate to rain on anyones parade here. Dreams are great. Being able to go to lan to play a computer game is great. Hell, even winning a bit of cash for playing computer games is fantastic. But once you start buying into the crap Mr.Munoz is trying to spoonfeed you, you are only kidding yourself. In 3 years the CPL will be exactly the same. A summer LAN in Dallas, the costs covered by a few big sponsors, the prize sums about the same as now. Only difference is that the game won't be CS. And you can bet your ass that Mr.Munoz will try to convince you that a novelty article in the Fort Lauderdale Gazette is a surefire sign that gaming has finally gone mainstream.
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