Introduction
As some of you may know I ran a project from around August 2010 until just after last years SAGE event with the main aim of attracting organisations into Enemy Territory. In the run up the SAGE, ET had a surge of interest in eSports compared to previous years and a number of new organisations entered the fold some of which I had talked to a few months before and some of which I had not.
When I started the project I went as high as possible straight away, to see what people were thinking about ET and what they thought about eSports team recruitment. I talked to people from Power gaming, Fnatic, SK gaming among a host of other teams who did not have ET squads at the time. I asked a number of questions relating to ET as well as policies regarding team recruitment in general. The reason I went for the top teams first is they will deal with things with a far more business like response and I thought I would be more likely to get answers to the questions fielded just due to the level of professionalism compared to newer organisations.
I asked a few questions, one of which being the obvious - What do you know about the Game ET? All the orgs knew of ET, Huzzah! most even knew some history about prequels and had played either RtCW or ET, which is great news. I also asked about why they didn't have a team and what would attract them to taking a team, the general response was the lack of major events organised outside of the ET community as well as competition for Team spots within the org, COD, CS and CSS were more attractive to organisations. Pretty much all organisations mentioned that more known orgs in the game would increase the attractiveness too, pretty much a catch 22.
The Boost
A few months on and Power Gaming came into ET picking up the old Belgian 8bits lineup everyone knew so well. As well as Nordic, RAGE, WinFakt, Anexis, Next Evolution, Snogard Dragons to name some of the orgs jumping into the fray - the buzz in ET with organisations playing games against each other was great, it had a really good feel that ET was make steps in the right direction and potentially could make another step up and attract more organisations - but as quick as the sharp influx of orgs came they were gone shortly after SAGE.
So what happened?
August/September 2011 was a big time for ET in that the game went through some big changes and some bad publicity. PHX an event I was organising with Ethr fell through sadly due to a lack of interest and the game made the change back to the 6on6 format - Within 3months of this happening all major organisations in Enemy Territory were gone, except Anexis, and although the above were major contributors there were ways of stopping the snowball before it turns into avalanche.
Anexis eSports held onto their support by unequivocally having the best lineup in Enemy Territory right now. It helps that it would seem the organisation itself seemingly rank performance above all else if they had been part of another organisation or not come first at SAGE they too probably would have run into problems holding onto their org.
The problem we have in ET is how uneducated the scene is on how eSports works and the general response to ET in eSports. I explained it to my brothers as simply as possible as although one of them knows a lot about ET the other does not, and neither have a real grasp on eSports, and in general simple = easier to understand! so here was my explanation of organisation support:
You go to a supermarket (Organisation) to get some food (Support) when you get to the counter instead of paying (Return on Investment/Support) you simply consume the food (Support).
This is to say, ET teams currently and in all honesty have never given return on support they have received - maybe it is ignorance or maybe it is laziness, the result is the same - you lose your support, you have trouble getting support again the next time around. The best thing to do would be to keep your organisation happy and keep your support continuously not just be another LAN only, money & support grabbing team - which generally puts any organisation completely off ever being involved in ET again.
Add to this a massive problem in terms of core lineups not staying together for more then a season, this really puts off organisations as they assume, quite rightly in a lot of cases, that you want support for an upcoming LAN event only and will not give any form of return on their investment long term. Which begs the question...
What do organisations want in return for their support?
I have spoken to a number of players in the scene and it is surprising how many think that having the best team is the be all and end all for organisations. It really is not. Giving the organisation something they can show to sponsors for them to keep sponsors happy or perhaps attract more & better sponsorship is more important. Winning games can help in this, major competitions too, but dont think that this alone is all that is needed or even that you cant have good support because you arent #1.
What is really easy for orgs are the numbers - something that they can show to their sponsors, how their brand is being spread in eSports. These numbers can come from anywhere, website traffic to the organisations site is probably the easiest and most key but even ETTV game views can help the numbers game. Games like Star Craft 2 and League of Legends have the massive bonus of the amount of people watch live games and practices and ET cannot compete with these numbers, but for the amount of support the average ET team needs or wants it is comparable if done properly.
The orgs I mentioned above suffered from a wide range of problems from Snogard Dragons saga, Nevo and so on. Simple truth is that aboslutely no team, besides perhaps Team Dignitas and maybe NORDIC, gave enough back to their orgs outside of actually playing games. Because that is all that counts - you will always play games, win or lose, the difference is what else you can add to help the org progress and this was the major reason all the organisations I contacted during Project Phoenix had issues, not getting return on the support provided was the major one, something that was said a lot.. "We cannot justify the expenditure and would not see enough of a return for our organisation and sponsors."
Still need support?
Building stable lineups that can continue for muliple seasons & competitions is a major factor in holding onto support as you are less likely to "split up" after a LAN event and lose the support that was so hard to get in the first place. Think long term rather then just whats on the horizon and you will save yourself a lot of time and trouble in the future.
In the first episode of "The Executives" a youtube video update that gives insight into eSports for the 'other side' IE the people behind the organisation it talks about sponsorship, although they are mainly talking about getting sponsorship as an organisation it gives you a great idea on what they need to do to actually support you as a team so in turn you need to make this process easier for them to not get cut loose.
the Executives #1: Sponsorships 101
Also there was recently a panel of people who talked about gaming, eSports and where it is heading they look into some major subjects for eSports and even 'smaller' games are talked about. The panel was moderated by our very own TosspoT and gives you an idea about the complexities behind just getting support. video can be seen here.
How it should be done
I will give you a great example of how it should be done, and although I do not think ET can do this sort of thing it shows you what people are doing, outside of actually playing, for their ongoing organisation support.
Evil Genuises, otherwise known as Team EG, are probably the biggest organisation in the western world right now. they have numerous massive sponsors, a Facebook page with over 30,000 likes and probably get tens of thousands unique clicks, per day, to their homepage. These numbers are massive and contribute to everything the organisation has achieved. Do you think simply playing a game and turning up at LAN would be enough for a major organisation like this? No! They just wouldn't allow it - smaller orgs are in the same position but they cannot afford for you to waste their time.
Team EG Youtube channel gets a lot of hits also (remember more numbers = good!) with a number of videos going online weekly. some videos caught my eye as they had very little in the way of gaming content but had some of the highest amount of views on the channel themselves.
Tour of the EG House in Arizona
Pumpkin carving, eSports branded
The rest of the videos on their channel, showing Sc2 games, get on average 750-1500 views unless it is a major competition game. If ET Teams started streaming games from their own Point of View and uploaded the content, even if it got a couple of hundred views - these are all usable numbers.
Conclusion
Getting support is always hard, simply said. Keeping it is easy - if you put the effort in. Try and think of different ways to help your org, as you aren't separate you should be proud to wear the tag, represent and be part of an organisation. Stop thinking of yourselves as separate entities. And of course, remember..
Onto ET: Hire hot girl. Profit.
I'd be surprised if Insignia Cadre wasn't happy with our contribution! Too bad our team died prior to CDC3 and we didn't get to enjoy their support more. But yeah, a very good article and hopefully we will see more of the bigger organizations getting involved with ET again.
Also for mamut I made an impression movie of this CoD4 LAN we been to. Might be exceptions though in the end and most teams were just freeloading (?)
A lot of the cod4 teams and sc2 players have personal twitter / fb accounts etc. so can promote org stuff on there easily and would be quite a good way of initially getting support.
They could make a few videos of how to improve teamwork or aim etc. But one team can do that and only 2-3 videos would be released on that.
They could also walk trough all maps and explain good spots or just general tactic but i don't think many people would watch that.
Source: http://www.esreality.com/post/2239980/esl-lets-get-the-good-times-back/
The bottom line is that the community has to be stable, active and contribute.
Just need to get my new PC sorted out so I can finally put the wheels into motion. Have priced an absolute beast for under £700 so get those donations fired in!
there is a reason why they went from CS1.6 to CSS etc...
e: btw this is a really good column! I would like to know where to start in order for a rethinking regarding competitive ET (google translator fuck ye)
Plus you should add the better they behave (ingame, on community sites like cf, gtv et cetera) the bigger is their chance to recive something
It seems to me the goal here might not necessarily just be to have support for teams to attend lans, but for lans to have support to attract orgs, of any caliber.
To do this I suspect a sufficient large prize purse distributed evenly between the placements and extensive in-depth coverage with support by the community would be honey enough to attract some new “upstart” orgs looking to “expand their brand” and bring back some of the more venerable names in wolf history, who maybe willing to give ET a 2nd, 3rd etc etc chance. But how do you get a prize purse juicy enough? (without robbing some north African bank!!!) And also convince an org that their investment will at least break even, if not dividend.
Well many people have done a put in a huge and I do mean huge amount of effort to push water up hill and get the many previous excellent lans (my personal thanks goes out to you, you know who you are) we have had to date off the ground, but as a community we have not supported their efforts to keep the momentum, continuity and general interest their efforts have generated in ET alive.
Perhaps if you could get 6 - 8 teams of active all stars high profile player (with commitment and not clan hoppers etc) at least within the ET community, and say have a on-line league with a planned lan tournament final, excellent event coverage, ettv, general esport commentary etc, we as a community could generate what essentially is marketing material (hits, stats, videos, interviews, comments) to not only attract sponsorship of the participating teams for lan, but also could be used to attract a exclusive sponsor for the lan. ET has rather shit the bed previously so to speak. To attract orgs and decent lan sponsorship perhaps the glamour of say, a tournament of only the best of the best, where anyone can win any game, personal rival develop and general ET activity with tangible, recorded, demonstrational results and a intriguing tournament format, would at least generate some tangible interest from smaller orgs and even the big boys as well as perhaps entice a company such as RAZER etc launching a new product to drop a % of the products marketing budget on a event they can see, already has, real, sizeable support and interest from their target audience.
By the very nature of the beast, if we do not deliver then we shall not be delivered upon.
Just an idea!
PS fuck you grammar and spelling Nazis i am way to fcukde up to care about such things.
If you don't treat the competition professionally, how can you expect outsiders to invest money into it? ET is on itself hardly profitable for MGCs, and it's already quite a feat that organizations such as dignitas ventured into ET after so many years. If you believe that, for example, training isn't necessary for LANs or online comps, then it makes it even harder to create an image to the outside world that this game is for real and can have some ROI for MGCs.
Just my 2c, I think the mentality of many is making all of this much harder than it should be.
Community screwed this game hard and now it cant expect much. I really don't understand why some people still keep on helping (or did for a long time) the same players who kept on making mixes for every single tournament/lan and it would just be sad to see it again this time. I know some players don't really care about the rest of community but its just fucking rude to ruin the fun for others.
e: on a serious note, I think TSM is a terrible example, first of all they are a top notch team in league and second of all they did not get "picked up" by an organisation, they set up their own thing..
That's the truth. If you write a good application it is not that hard to join a MGO. Like I did when my team joined
After they decided to split the ways the reason was clear. ET is not competitive enough. But after all we found a new home at
You cant just simply make a bank account and say cmon people donate, this money will be used for the improvement of ET.
Manny people have been ripped of this way (not in ET scene, just in general) and therefor not many people will be prepared to donate. And if they are you actually need to set up a good plan about how to spend it and how/who to decide where the money goes.
Seriously man, this game has come to its end, most of the players are old retarded kids (and I bet that the "unknown" are even worse than some "known" dog faced boys) and everybody knows it.
What would they do with your money?
Give it to highskilled players who don't want to pay their travel to the lan center?
not signing up for this season's EC but willing to play BFB2 is just one short example.
may this game rest in peace, it was nice while it lasted
Thats just invalid argument. Their effort is to entertain and keep the teams playing. They aren't worthless. You are worthless because you are both shit and always whine :D
on a side note,atleast you and your team were the ones that promoted ET the most overall(starting from u96d to idle and dignitas). same goes for clown, eventho I was never "fan" of him.
Some people are made to own in the game and some are made to organise cups and such. We need both, its true.
Imagine the amount of traffic someone like XyLoS or yourself could generate if you were to create videos with commentary on a match (or practice) explaining the decisions you make, based on what you are expecting the opposing team to do in certain situations etc.
That wouldn't be possible to do in ET as it would be rather dull and boring.
SC/SC2 is THAT game, it's the ALPHA and OMEGA of true e-sports skills.
And besides that, it's far too late to attract viewers to ET. Graphics, networking, TZAC (a 3rd party application) is what would scare away possible players (and let's face it, most of the people watching actually PLAY the game).
ET has grown and become old at some point, I don't say it ain't the best FPS/tactical shooter of all time but the good times are over.
ET isn't dead and aslong as people continue to say it's dead ET is gonna stay alive. But the golden times some people are still looking for, they are gone. There are far better f2p games available. And yes I said it, free 2 play. Haters gonna hate but what difference does ET make compared to games like HoN.
So first you say you can't compare SC2 with ET but then you do the same with HoN xD nice troll on april 1st
A rl friend just attended a LAN in germany, sponsored by his team and won both 2on2 and 1on1 tournaments x) SC2 ofc.
Now he probably won't be able to manage all the offers and invitations!
LOL
As mentioned, a lot of orgs have passed through even in recent times - the problem is seemingly keeping organisations. what is the NBS lineup?
but all in all the the biggest Problem is that the Teams aren't stable. there is maybe a handfull of Teams which playes more then 1year active together.
Secondly the stability of the teams is far from what most serious organisations require, after most LAN's a good percentage of the teams start to chop and change players because they didn't get the most satisfactory results, that in turn will just cause sponsors to become immediately disinterested.
Unfortunately at this point i cannot see many large organisations supporting an ET team, frankly ET has been given too many chances and not delivered, in fact it would be a waste of time for a large organisation to support ET because they simply will not get a ROI for many reasons including the fact that it's simply an old game now which will not interest sponsors, they are hardly going to see a surge in keyboard, mouse, headset sales etc because the top teams use their products...
Picture of nowdays ET looks like this, ET players(and wannabe stars) playing for several teams at the same time,trying to score as much points as they can get for their own solo careers, prolly you'll say it's mine free will i can play where ever i wan't sure thing everyone needs a change now and then but playing every 5h for different team tells us something different,loyalty to the clan's is equal to zero,i'm not sure which sponsor is willing to gamble with their money on that sort of players/teams.
10 guys doesn't make a community but ten teams does,some loyalty between players and clans has to be restored otherwise this clan whoring may destroy competitive scene and it has already proven how much support they've got from sponsors,equal to what...
/q embarrassed