Not a huge fan of MLG so when I heard about this thing that was happening in Chicago this weekend I was pretty much ready to pass. However, my son was watching it Saturday and I figured I’d give it a couple of minutes. I ended up watching the whole thing, including the Status Quo/Warriors match.
Essentially, I liked what I saw. The production needs some work, but I’m not going to fault them for that because I’m pretty sure there is a great deal of turnover in their production staff.
During one of those opportunities where we were allowed to listen in on the team chat one of the commentators mentioned that in an MLG tournament you could get a Technical Foul for trash talk.
A Technical Foul. For trash talk. In a Halo game.
Why do I have a problem with that? Well, take a look at your original copy of Halo 2. Not the disk, but the box, or the booklet inside. Trash talk was allowed at the inception of Halo on Xbox live. No, it was encouraged. As such, trash talk is as much a part of Halo as Master Chief, and therefore AGL gets all the support from me that MLG does not. See, they leave all the Halo stuff in the game. Their tournament was much like a CE LAN party, and THAT is what made Halo, in my opinion.
I don’t know if they’re going to be completely shut out with this new deal with -Yoink!-, but I wish them well.
MLG didn’t ban trash talk; they limited what you could say (thus ‘technicals’ given for overly inappropriate comments), and it was done so because MLG is a professional organization with sponsors and money being pumped into it, which means that the onus is on them to broadcast a respectable product which doesn’t offend or embarrass anyone. This is no different than the NBA, NFL, or anything else you see on TV where there are regulations.
AGL is a grass-roots organization, and it’s level of “seriousness” as a business is nowhere even remotely close to MLG. Thus, the product you see is less regulated. AGL could learn a lot from MLG, because their constant unprofessionalism is at least a bit embarrassing to their own self image.
My biggest complaint was the commentators. It seemed like they were people that were there for the tournament, yet they didn’t seem to know much of anything that was going on, or basic strategy. I didn’t watch all of it but there were many times I muted it until they turned on team chat.
I’m really glad someone is trying though. It wasn’t perfect, or as good as MLG had it, but they are still new and probably need to find more dedicated people to run things. There were a few minor things that, if changed, could have made it a lot better.
All in all though, I watched for the good gameplay, and I got to see a lot of it, so I’m happy with them.
There were a few good commentators mixed in there in my opinion. The combination of Julius Tacadena and Billy Lutz worked out surprisingly well.
> My biggest complaint was the commentators. It seemed like they were people that were there for the tournament, yet they didn’t seem to know much of anything that was going on, or basic strategy. I didn’t watch all of it but there were many times I muted it until they turned on team chat.
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> I’m really glad someone is trying though. It wasn’t perfect, or as good as MLG had it, but they are still new and probably need to find more dedicated people to run things. There were a few minor things that, if changed, could have made it a lot better.
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> All in all though, I watched for the good gameplay, and I got to see a lot of it, so I’m happy with them.
It didn’t used to be like that OP until like 2007. People started whining because they were getting their little feelings hurt so MLG introduced technicals.
I’m not north-american, or well, I’m not in a country where there is such dedication to videogames, so I’ve not had contact with the actual competitive communities. But this guys get all my support, let’s see if all goes well. =D
> MLG didn’t ban trash talk; they limited what you could say (thus ‘technicals’ given for overly inappropriate comments), and it was done so because MLG is a professional organization with sponsors and money being pumped into it, which means that the onus is on them to broadcast a respectable product which doesn’t offend or embarrass anyone. <mark>This is no different than the NBA, NFL, or anything else you see on TV where there are regulations</mark>.
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> AGL is a grass-roots organization, and it’s level of “seriousness” as a business is nowhere even remotely close to MLG. Thus, the product you see is less regulated. AGL could learn a lot from MLG, because their constant unprofessionalism is at least a bit embarrassing to their own self image.
It is different, because there are no regulations. This is the internet, not broadcast television. The game itself is rated mature.
Broadcast a respectful product? Ever watch The Sopranos? The Wire? Hung? That stuff is not broadcast. You need cable. For AGL you need internet. Internet is the Wild West, just like cable.
What AGL lacks is serious sponsors. This past weekend’s tournament it was clear that they had no dedicated production staff, and game participants were doing some of that work. To me that means they were trying to do the best they could with what they had. I thought the actual games went well, but weren’t organized enough to keep our interest between matches, which made for a lot of dead air.
Anyway, my point was that the tournament itself was entertaining, and they managed to pull it off with the same game I have in my Xbox. No one at or with AGL is expecting 343i to come up with a “suitable” map or game settings that are “acceptable.” And they all seemed to really, really like Halo 4.
> It is different, because there are no regulations. This is the internet, not broadcast television. The game itself is rated mature.
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> Broadcast a respectful product? Ever watch The Sopranos? The Wire? Hung? That stuff is not broadcast. You need cable. For AGL you need internet. Internet is the Wild West, just like cable.
It doesn’t matter if there are no regulations on the internet: how the **** do you think MLG gets the funding to run tournaments on the scale that they operate on? They have investors and sponsors who pump money into the league. Newsflash: 75% of Halo “trash-talk” revolves around rape and homophobic slurs. No legit company wants to be associated with or put money into a product in which “get r*ped” is dropped every 15 seconds. I compared it with the NBA or any other sports league because guess what? If a player swears in an interview, the league fines them. Not because it is some big illegal act, but because it makes the league and it’s investors look bad. It happened to Shaquille O’Neal.
Sir Scoots, who until recently used to be the COO of e-sports “team” Evil Geniuses, spoke about this very subject. A “team” like Evil Geniuses signs players, and pays/promotes them by partnering with numerous sponsors who then gain the publicity of the Pro gamers on the team (and the team itself). He blatantly said that his Pro player’s contracts are subject to behaviour: that is, at no point are they ever allowed to say anything about rape or make a homophobic insult towards an opposing player. These are extremely taboo subjects…ie: not to be joked about, even if its just “trash talk”. This is exactly why MLG put restrictions and penalties on inappropriate trash-talk as the league grew into a legitimate business/organization.
That is sponsorship 101. Once someone pays you to represent their product, your actions are now tied to that company. Remember when Kobe got into that rape-allegation and Nike dropped him? Or when Tiger Woods’ cheating story and divorce broke and he was dropped by Nike?
AGL can run tournaments where they DGAF because it is bush-league compared to MLG.