Profile of MajorBloodnok

+1 to what Rogers said.

My main gripe with Ami and $ is that he treats it like a business. That might work for a huge game like LoL or Dota2, but won't work for a niche game like CoH2.

If you truly do it for the love of the game and the community you wouldn't feel the need to be compensated.

I seem to remember that we have been through a lot of this stuff before at the time of OCF.

I want to go back to the main thrust of this blog, which seems to have wandered off track. Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. The days of it being a love which dare not speak its name, are fast disappearing."You're doing what? Gaming?"

SEGA was prepared to pay approx $26 million for bankrupt stock 3 years ago. Bankrupt stock tends not attract premium prices. It gives you a clue as to the inherent value which SEGA saw in the Relic stock for which it bid, albeit that COH2 was very much underdeveloped at the time of purchase.

Gauging from the mad hollering which takes place upon the release of dlcs for this game, one may surmise that Relic are still doing very nicely, thank you.

It is therefore not asking too much for them to reinvest back into the community as a marketing exercise. If there is one thing I know about marketing, it always comes at a cost, and companies will invest heavily in it. You mention more high profile games like League of Legends or DOTA, which can afford to pay teams of people to live in a house and practise 12 hours per day, 7 days per week,for big prizes. Some gamers are now apparently millionaires. The comparison with the monetisation of professional sports becomes more credible every year.

Against that backdrop, is how the discussion here about Relic strategies should have developed.

We are not privy to Relic's balance sheet or profit and loss accounts, but the comparative slowness of release of dlcs and skins now, suggests that they meet their targets. Whether those targets are high enough is another matter. Given the general grousing about lack of marketing of the original game and the general lack of support until OCF forced its way onto the Relic portal last Summer, I fear the marketing probably still leaves much to be desired. Advertising the players etc on the game screens was a big jump forward and it should have occurred long ago.

But I do not think this should blind people about the lack of investment in tourneys. Ipkai's blog mentioned previous lack of support. Even if Relic is not harvesting millions of dollars at the same rate as larger gaming companies like Blizzard, it is still doing alright for a company of 100 employees, not least becaUse it gets a head start from the subsidy it receives from British Columbia. Dlcs are infrequent. The production of skins (with concomitant income) has virtually dried up and it looks as if Relic will be satisfied to share the income of future skins with the creator and Steam. This is not the action of a company which is hard up for cash. If Relic were struggling, you would see more useless Commanders and also see Relic farm more income from skins and faceplates.

Even when Tales of Heroes first started, the general concensus would have been that the web was a freewheeling source of information, where the introduction of money was frowned upon. You could read any newspaper online for free, whether it was the Times, the New York Times or the Telegraph. The idea of having to pay for antivirus protection was sneered at by IT professionals, who asked how web use could be encouraged if greedy software companies charged to keep out viruses. AVG antivirus was free. 13 years ago, trolls were rumoured to exist - and shock horror if one landed on your messageboard.

But things change. Many newspapers now charge to let people read their content. You have to pay for AVG. More people use the web than watch TV. Trolls abound. The web has changed fundamentally.

I therefore tend to think that people who advance the idea that creating a major event is not a business, are either old-style web users, who look back with rose-tinted spectacles to a world which no longer exists, or they are young students, who have little awareness of the commercial world.

At some point, I hope that supporters of this game will open their eyes and understand that what Ami has been doing is simply bcs he is ahead of the pack. I am reasonably confident this will occur, as blog discussions like this take place. When I see our casters like Imperial Dane, Romeo or Stormless make tidy little sums of money from their 'donations', or Kluge gratefully accepting 'donations' or gifts of Commanders, or Helping Hans reaping over $300 per month, it tells me that even our younger casters are now waking up to the realities of life.

Therefore, Juan, you will understand that I reject your implausible contention that organising big events should be done for nothing. Further, even Relic accepts it has to pay somebody, however grudgingly - it has simply chosen to pay somebody else. Have you done the Maff yet, Juan? Have you worked out what ESL are likely to be getting from the $18,000? Or do you think ESL are doing it for the love of the game?

ESL are not part of the COH2 community. Both Relic and ESL are now going to piggyback on a resurgent interest in this game, which came about from the community driven OCF, which was inspired bv Ami.

I very much agree with Awa's stance on all this. Ami leads and he knows what he is doing. Ipkai's blog criticises the investment in ESL, when a proven broadcaster had already demonstrated his worth again, through OCF. Relic should be pouring much more money into the marketing of this game, far more than they are currently doing. They can afford it. And they have made an error in promoting ESL, over what the community could have provided - and which it had proved through OCF it could deliver.

My question to Relic is: why?

You don't see professional salesman trying to sell people plain old atmospheric air and then complaining when no one buys it.

As I have no great love for salesmen and marketeers, it may not surprise you to know I disagree with this assertion. They are a necessary evil - but salesmen and marketeers who aim low, are not salesmen or marketeers who I would employ.

Edited

Nice one, Choccy!