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Rob Zacny

ES2D 2016/03/01: 2 Ass, 2 Spurious

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I felt there was some serious mischaracterization on the 2GD drama. First let's not act like 2GD was "on some dota streams" he hosted three Internationals before this. Also let's not act like he was doing a bad job as host and people didn't like it, the drama came because he was doing such a good job that when he was fired Valve was very much at odds with what the community wanted. The whiteboard was not some accidental thing and was very much planned and necessary to help fill the massive delays between games. I also believe that saying he was disinterested in dota is also wrong, because he was playing the role of the noob to ask the questions for the viewers at home. The real problem is James is the same as he alwalys has been and Valve is trying to act more professional to try to attract an mainstream audience that doesn't exist by giving up the things that made esports and past valve events fun and great.

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I agree with Wertwert765 that the reason why this blew up like it did was that the community liked yames' performance and didnt understand why he was fired. also he sure is not disinterested in dota, he just has his own way of interacting/ talking as a host. the tournament itself is a neverending trainwreck. right now as im writing theres delay because the organizers lost the keyboard of a player and the last match of today will possibly be played without on site audience because the venue will be closed soon...

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I largely agree with Rob and Andrew about James. While the bits of his hosting I caught I was entertained by, I since learned about some of the more boundary pushing moments and became decidedly less impressed. When I read his super long letter I really lost all sympathy for him. It came off as just trying to deflect all blame, and he was also clearly trying to add fuel to the fires of a terrible situation at that point, making life for his former coworkers much more difficult during a very trying situation.

 

Where Rob and Andrew lose me is when they argue that it is okay for personalities like Thorin and Richard Lewis to remain on board. I think they're completely toxic, and in Richard Lewis' case also involved in physical assault, and I think it is ridiculous that any organizations continue to work with them. If a stock broker assaulted another employee at a financial firm you wouldn't justify that stock broker's continued presence at the firm on the basis of his or her passion for finance. Ultimately this is just another example of the boys club mentality that dominates esports. In James' letter he complained about turning e-sports into professional sports. But I think that's a false dichotomy from someone stuck in an older era, and producers and the audiences for e-sports shouldn't have to choose between a dry carbon copy of a professional sports presentation copied for video games, and what we're witnessing at Shanghai.

 

Perhaps the most amazing thing though is as bad as the group stages were, day 1 of the playoffs was so much worse. There hasn't been a single thing that has gone right this tournament, and this has to be one of the most colossal fuckups Valve has ever pulled off. Valve is going to have to pull off some serious magic to fix this because they've alienated a huge part of their audience and the players and casters with this tournament.

 

And it sucks to have to talk about all this stuff because the games have been really amazing. Liquid vs Alliance was amazing, high-level DOTA. MVP continue to impress. Chinese teams are hanging on by a thread. If Secret bring their A game their match against OG should be excellent too.

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James used the word "cunt" on day one, made jokes about masturbating, etc.

 

My guess is the reason people had to fight for him to come back at Valve is because other people felt he was too crude. When he did come back, he was even more crass than usual on the first day. He was told to tone it down on the following day.

 

Then, on the following day, he made a straight up homophobic joke about two Dota "celebrities" (friends of his, but nonetheless inappropriate because gay jokes are not okay), and dunked on Envy pretty hard. I don't like Envy, but yo.

 

So he got fired.

 

And then in his 17 page explanation (hahhaaha) he threw Sheever under the bus, admitted that he hadn't been keeping up with Dota and hadn't put in the time to catch up and learn all the new mechanics, the new meta, etc...

 

I mean c'mon. I have historically liked James' hosting. I felt he was entertaining in a way that a lot of hosts just plain weren't. But he was not innocent in this debacle. Let's not act like he is!

 

I also agree with sclpls re: Thorin and rlewis. They're both pretty damn toxic, rlewis physically assaulted a pro player AFTER  intentionally antagonizing him into a confrontation... Plus rlewis writes for Breitbart, which, hoo boy, let's not even get into that.

 

Okay that's out of the way. Carry on.

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I agree with large parts of Wertwert765's comments in thinking that there's been at least some mischaracterization of the 2GD drama and I think there was a really interesting opportunity for discussion about the state of DotA and esports that was missed as a result. 

2GD is anything but disinterested in DotA and has a significant history with the scene which isn't hard to find and it's not like he was just a personality on the low profile side of the scene. He hosted a number of Valve's International events and there was never really much in way of complaints about his sardonic delivery style in the past. I think he made some mistakes and the whole thing is really weird.

I think removing him was completely reasonable but the situation reflects the crossroads of where DotA came from, where it is right now, where the fans want it to go, and where Valve thinks it could and should go (let's not forget that Shanghai was part of this whole new Majors system that Valve implemented). I think this crossroads has to be considered along with this drama otherwise we're missing a lot of relevant context.

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I fully endorse slam-dunking misogynists and transphobes in the esports community directly into the garbage can, where they belong.

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So, I know you guys probaly dont really like heroes of the storm or hearthstone, but I though the whole idea was talking about all things that heppened on Esports on said week. In this week we had the finals for the americas winter championship in HoTS but nothing was mentioned, I think you guys should at least mention that said events heppened and at least tell us the winner for such, in all of the rest I think you guys are doing a great work, keep it up!

 

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I fully endorse slam-dunking misogynists and transphobes in the esports community directly into the garbage can, where they belong.

Of course and that part isn't that controversial hence why removing him was perfectly reasonable.

The problem is that Valve is engaged in a little bit of wanting to eat their cake and have it too and GabeN's public response being rather unprofessional in its own right. Valve didn't create DotA nor did it create the esport around DotA. They took what was there (in all of its often juvenile glory) including the casting scene and made it much bigger through heavy promotion. That's not a bad thing but Valve got lazy about organizing and directing things on a number of levels and it came around and bit them in the rear in Shanghai. 

The tragedy for Valve isn't just that some fans are angry but that they're laughing at them right now. 

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I was told by someone who knows more than me about this stuff that Valve originally wanted to run all the Majors on their own. But ESL complained, because they'd been doing big-ish tournaments for a while and were worried Valve would eat into their cut, basically.

 

Valve relented and let them do it. And then they left Perfect World do it in China.

 

So, the blame isn't ENTIRELY Valve's, here. Not to say they're innocent. I agree what Gabe did was unprofessional... even if I do look at it and actually laugh at how ridiculously blunt it is. I also think they should've done a better job of working with Perfect World to ensure they wouldn't fuck things up.

 

But, basically, Perfect World is the team running this shitshow, right. Could Valve really have known how this was going to go down ahead of time? The International has been consistently run with higher and higher production values every year, with the only real problems being stuff like DDoS attacks and occasional technical hiccups, which isn't TOO surprising when so many different electronic pieces have to be connected perfectly. IMO, if Valve had been in full control of the Shanghai Major, it would've been better.

 

(Even if the first part of my post isn't true, I'd say the second part still holds weight.)

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So, I know you guys probaly dont really like heroes of the storm or hearthstone, but I though the whole idea was talking about all things that heppened on Esports on said week. In this week we had the finals for the americas winter championship in HoTS but nothing was mentioned, I think you guys should at least mention that said events heppened and at least tell us the winner for such, in all of the rest I think you guys are doing a great work, keep it up!

 

They haven't mentioned StarCraft much either despite GSL and SSL getting into the swing of things. ES2D seems to mostly focus on only two or three very high profile events (usually weekend events) per show, so things get left behind. Also I'm guessing that they pay attention to which games' discussion gets them more engagement and so cater to that audience, which is perfectly fine of course.

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I was told by someone who knows more than me about this stuff that Valve originally wanted to run all the Majors on their own. But ESL complained, because they'd been doing big-ish tournaments for a while and were worried Valve would eat into their cut, basically.

 

Valve relented and let them do it. And then they left Perfect World do it in China.

 

So, the blame isn't ENTIRELY Valve's, here. Not to say they're innocent. I agree what Gabe did was unprofessional... even if I do look at it and actually laugh at how ridiculously blunt it is. I also think they should've done a better job of working with Perfect World to ensure they wouldn't fuck things up.

 

But, basically, Perfect World is the team running this shitshow, right. Could Valve really have known how this was going to go down ahead of time? The International has been consistently run with higher and higher production values every year, with the only real problems being stuff like DDoS attacks and occasional technical hiccups, which isn't TOO surprising when so many different electronic pieces have to be connected perfectly. IMO, if Valve had been in full control of the Shanghai Major, it would've been better.

 

(Even if the first part of my post isn't true, I'd say the second part still holds weight.)

It's actually pretty hard to call IMO.

I used to work as a stagehand and soundguy about 10 years ago. I can't say for sure but more than likely Valve doesn't keep a full production team internally so much as they contract out a lot of the production services to a local company when it's time for the International. Given the Seattle location I imagine they can find people with the production and technical skills to put on something like that without too much trouble (don't know if those are IATSE crews) and at a reasonable cost. Shipping a production team like that internationally a couples times a year isn't feasible without severely eating into your profits. The solution is to contract out the production work to a local company which is what happened here. Just like any other contracted work it's up to the client (in this case Valve) to vet the company they're hiring and looking into the reputation and capabilities of this type of crew is actually a fairly standard thing in the industry so I'd argue, yes, they could have had an inkling of how things might go.

Perfect World had a reputation that wasn't a mystery. There were comments even before the 2GD drama to expect production issues. Yes, Valve relented but that implies they had control too. They made a business decision and if it had gone well they would have reaped the rewards but if you're going to take the benefit you get to take the liabilities too.

I think another thing to consider is that for all the excitement there is about DotA the market is only so big. To put on these Majors Valve had to step in on preexisting territory because just adding more tournaments probably would have spread the players and fans too thin. They have a right to do that but it would have gotten ugly. 

Growing pains for the sport.

 

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