For better or for worse?

Over a period of unknown time and a quantity of unknown installments, we will put on our thinking caps and tackle hot topics that have, should, or could occur in our world of eSports. I will illustrate the situation at hand, offer the contrary sides to the topic, and finally offer my opinions that can be portrayed analytically, emotionally, and most often controversially.

In our modern world, knowledge is a freebie, yet the fact that it comes so modestly we often disregard this cheap acquisition with little or close to no analysis of how it affects us and our community. Little do we know the power and authority we have over changes, as constant as change may be; the community as a homogenous entity can control the direction of which the change flows – all it takes is absorption of the knowledge given and eventually ask ourselves: Is it for better or for worse?


The Scenario

DirecTV recently announced its plans on creating a global league that attempts to unify and condense eSports into a more defined term by building an infrastructure similar to the major sporting leagues we have in North America; namely the NHL, NFL, NBA etc.

The ultimate goal of the DirecTV/CGS business model is to make a clear differentiation between “professional” and “amateur” gamers. It does so by embracing a few facts about sports. First and foremost, what differentiates a “professional” from an “amateur” is not necessarily their skill difference but their pay difference. Secondly, a player is “professional” because he's in a prestigious organization that caters to the mass media and essentially the people. With the boundaries set and the terms defined, DirecTV intends to introduce these “professionals” to those who know little of the sport and entertain them with something new and exciting.

DirecTV is aggressively challenging the current state of community. Being as spontaneous as it is now with a dozen organizations out there attempting to make a few quick bucks from the unfamiliar territory, the DirecTV/CGS goal is to stabilize and establish dominance in the scene. While there are many organizations out there like CPL, WSVG, WCG, WEG, ESWC who all want a piece of this freshly baked eSports pie, not many of them have the marketing leverage that DirecTV has. Many of these organizations are funded by massive corporations like ATI, NVIDIA and Intel – however these investor market pools, gaming hardware or more broadly, name branding, are limited to within our community. DirecTV on the other hand is in a $120 billion TV business that has a huge market pool which is open minded to entertainment. The fact that DirecTV already has a foot in this market and the resources needed makes it easier for them to monopolize.


Salary Caps

Trevor ‘midway’ Schmidt already identified a few critical problems with the drafting system that CGS wishes to adopt. Those who've read it should continue on this article, while those who haven't should head over to this link.

The problems Midway identified can be discouraging, but a few simple solutions can easily solve the matter. A clean-cut solution would be to have a salary cap for franchises when picking up players for their teams. Fr0d would be a bigger investment to acquire than a Big Al, or a kmode would be a cheaper acquisition than a Method. By having a salary cap, it limits the possibility of a “stacked” team and allows a flatter playing field in the competitive scene. This solves the issue that Trevor pointed out with the MLB’s New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.

Who is to determine the value of players? Would GMs have to negotiate with one another to buy a certain player and thus determine their market value? Or would there be a free-agency market in which the market decides who's worth more than the other?